Alcohol impairments affect drivers' behavior and performance on road that may result in crashes with serious consequences of fatalities and serious injuries. Among all vehicle types, alcohol-impaired motorcyclists are the most vulnerable with fatal crash involvement. This research study explored the contributing factors that lead to alcohol-impaired motorcyclists’ injury severity in single-motorcycle crashes. This study primarily investigates the crash data from Crash Analysis Reporting system (CAR) in Florida to understand the risk of alcohol-impaired motorcycle fatalities for different blood alcohol content (BAC). The preliminary cross-sectional analysis indicates that over the legal limit of BAC of 0.08 grams per deciliters (g/dL) for Florida, the fatalities are higher as the associated risks get higher. Moreover, this study further investigates the alcohol-impaired motorcyclists’ (BAC ≥ 0.08 g/dL) injury severity in single-motorcycle crashes to understand the contributing factors and their effects on three levels of injury severity (fatal, severe, and non-visible injury). The mixed logit model was developed and estimated for alcohol-impaired motorcyclists involved in single-motorcycle crashes in Florida over a period of five years from 2012 to 2016. The model results indicate that motorcycle type, age of motorcyclists, endorsements, helmet usage, roadway characteristics, crash characteristics, spatial and temporal characteristics significantly influence the injury severity of motorcyclists with BAC beyond the legal limit (0.08 g/dL and above). The model findings add to the growing body of literature suggesting that the single-motorcycle crashes with riders having BAC beyond 0.08 g/dL under different conditions and attributes related to crash, roadway, spatial and temporal, demographic and motorcycle type resulted in different injury severities.     

An Analysis of Injury Severities of Alcohol-Impaired Motorcyclists in Single-Motorcycle Crashes

ASCE International Conference on Transportation & Development (ICTD 2021) is organized by the Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI) of ASCE to facilitate the exchange of information, knowledge, and best practices among transportation and development practitioners and researchers, public infrastructure owners, policymakers, government engineers and planners, operations managers, and leading academics from around the world.

Paper Proceedings: https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483534 | https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483541

Conference DOI: https://doi.org/10.26226/m.631784867747920012e73503