THE FEASIBILITY OF IDENTIFYING SPEEDING-RELATED AND FATIGUE-RELATED CRASHES IN POLICE-REPORTED MASS CRASH DATA

During 1999, the Transport Accident Commission suggested that Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) undertake a project to examine the possibility of better defining crashes involving speeding and fatigue based on an analysis of Police-reported mass accident data in Victoria. It was proposed to obtain data from recent in-depth crash investigations in which the degree of speeding and/or fatigue was determined objectively. An in-depth crash study conducted by the NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit, RARU, of University of Adelaide, used accident reconstruction techniques to determine free-travelling vehicle speeds of crashed vehicles. This study was used in the development of a procedure to identify speed in Victorian Police reported mass crash data. Two types of models were developed; one that included only main effects and assumed no interactions between factors, and a second model that allowed for interactions and modelled them explicitly. The significant factors obtained from these models were used to develop indicator functions that estimated the travelling speed of a vehicle prior to a crash. (a)