Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054

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Accident Analysis and Prevention

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aap

Factors associated with consecutive and non-consecutive crashes on

freeways: A two-level logistic modeling approach
Zhou Zichu a, Meng Fanyu b, c, *, Song Cancan a, Tay Richard d, Guo Zhongyin a, Yang Lili c,
Wang Weili a, e
a
Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
b
Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
c
Department of Statistics and Data Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
d
School of Business IT and Logistics, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
e
Guizhou Transportation Planning Survey & Design Academy Co., Ltd, Guiyang, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A consecutive crash consists of a primary crash and one or more secondary crashes that occur subsequently in a
Consecutive crash short period of time within a certain distance. It often affects a relatively large area of road space and the traffic
Traffic hazard disruption created can be difficult for traffic managers to control and resolve. This study identifies the factors
Multi-level model
delineating a primary crash that results in secondary crashes within a minute from a regular crash that does not
Unobserved heterogeneity
Road safety
result in any secondary crashes. Random-effects, random-parameter and two-level binary logistic regression
models are applied to data collected on 8779 crashes on the freeway network of the Guizhou Province, China in
2018, of which 299 are consecutive crashes. According to the AIC values, the two-level logistic model out­
performs the other two models. Rear-end primary crashes have a significant random effect varying across road
segments on the occurrence of consecutive crashes. Various crash types (rear-end, roll-over and side-swipe),
tunnel crash and foggy weather are positively associated with the possibility to cause subsequent consecutive
crashes, whereas single-vehicle crash, truck involvement and the time periods with poorer natural lighting are
less likely to incur consecutive crashes. Recommendations are provided to minimize the possibility of the
occurrence of consecutive crashes on a freeway.

1. Introduction
The increasing number of traffic collisions worldwide has been a
topic of interest to road safety researchers and practitioners for decades.
Factors contributing to crash risks under various circumstances have
been identified for different types of crashes (Anastasopoulos et al.,
2012; Wang and Feng, 2019; Yu and Abdel-Aty, 2013; Hong et al., 2019;
Hosseinpour et al., 2018; D. Lord and Mannering, 2010; Meng et al.,
2017a, b; Rusli et al., 2018; Wang and Feng, 2019).
Among the different types of crashes, the occurrence of secondary
crashes is a special concern because of its impact on freeway operations,
cumulative social and economic costs, and potential preventability
(Yang et al., 2014; Vlahogianni et al., 2010). A secondary crash is
defined as a crash occurring spatially and temporally within the impact
area of a primary crash (Owens, 2010). It occurs under the influence of
the hazards created by a primary crash downstream and may impose
more burden to the traffic system such as congestion and subsequent
traffic crashes.
Previous studies on secondary crashes have primarily focused on the
occurrence and frequency of this type of crash. Various studies have
explored the occurrence of such crashes and its possible contributing
factors using logistic regressions (Karlaftis et al., 1999; Zhan et al., 2009;
Wang et al., 2016). Yang et al. (2014) and Xu et al. (2016) have gone
beyond basic logistic regressions and incorporated its variants to explore
rare events and unobserved heterogeneities, respectively. The occur­
rence of secondary crashes is significantly dependent on the duration of
the primary crash, queue length, traffic condition and road geometric
design (Yang et al., 2018). As for frequency of secondary crashes, mul­
tiple count data models on an aggregated level have been estimated and
compared, and factors including AADT, traffic composition, land use,
number of lanes, and speed limit have been found to be positively
associated with secondary crash frequencies (Sarker et al., 2017).

* Corresponding author at: Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
E-mail address: fymeng91@gmail.com (M. Fanyu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2021.106054
Received 6 June 2020; Received in revised form 7 October 2020; Accepted 19 February 2021
Available online 2 March 2021
0001-4575/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Z. Zichu et al.
By definition, secondary crashes are mainly caused by the queueing
effects generated from the primary crash, and hence the duration of the
primary crash significantly affects the occurrence of secondary crashes
(Yang et al., 2018). The spatiotemporal thresholds for identifying sec­
ondary crashes are relatively high, as cumulative effects are permitted
spatially and temporally in this case. Most previous studies have defined
secondary crashes by providing fixed spatial-temporal thresholds, and
the distance between the primary and secondary crashes is usually
longer than 2 miles, while the time span between the two crashes can be
larger than 2 h (Latoski et al., 1999; Moore et al., 2004; Green et al.,
2012). Several studies adopted dynamic identification of secondary
crashes based on either speed contour maps (Goodall, 2017; Park et al.,
2018) or shockwave models (Zheng et al., 2014; Mishra et al., 2016), in
which queuing effects were still the fundamental cause of the secondary
crashes.
In previous research, the occurrence of an immediate secondary
crash that ensues in a considerably short period of time within a certain
vicinity of the primary crash has not received enough attention. When
the time span between the two crashes is short enough, the traffic queue
will not develop into a significant problem, and the clearance time of the
primary crash is less of an issue. Under this circumstance, congestion
and the queuing effect will not play a major role in the occurrence of a
secondary crash.
The hazards produced by the primary crash mainly transmit up­
stream through vehicular behaviors and interactions, similar to the
mechanism of a chain-reaction crash (multiple-vehicle crash). This type
of immediate secondary crash is defined as a consecutive crash (CC) in
this study. A primary crash can induce multiple CCs within a short
period of time (named a CC series). This type of crash is distinctively
different from a chain-reaction crash, which is a single crash comprised
of a series of collisions happening over a short period time. Rather, a CC
series is a group of different crashes, each of which can involve one or
multiple vehicles.
Given the similarities between CCs and chain-reaction crashes, the
crash mechanisms of chain reaction crashes can be used as a starting
block to analyze CCs. Sugiyama and Nagatani (2013) and Nagatani and
Yonekura (2014) posit that chain-reaction crashes can be caused by a
sudden slowdown and a lane change of vehicles in the lead. Simulation
results from vehicle-following models showed that factors including
traffic conditions (headway and relative velocity) and the driver’s re­
action speed affected the occurrences of chain-reaction crashes (Naga­
tani, 2015).
Besides the simple chain-reaction crashes, traffic hazards may also
spread via vehicular interactions in a discrete and irregular manner
based on traffic wave theory. Considering the differing driver alertness
and swiftness in reaction, a hazard on the road may induce different
behaviors in upstream vehicles. Consequently, the hazard can still
spread backwards to the following vehicles, but its influence on the
following vehicles’ behaviors may fluctuate when passing from one
vehicle to another. Thus, collisions may not happen to adjacent vehicles
in a queue. Instead, a primary collision may trigger a secondary collision
from several vehicles away. This effect may be magnified on roads with
high speed and busy traffic, such as freeways (Nagatani, 2015; Nagatani
and Yonekura, 2014), resulting in a higher risk of CCs.
CCs may hinder the traffic worse than simple chain-reaction crashes,
as it consists of several crashes (each of which can involve one or mul­
tiple vehicles) and, unlike a simple multiple-vehicle crash, it often in­
volves a larger area of the road and creates a greater disruption to the
traffic system. Evacuation and emergency management of multiple and
separate crashes occurring in a limited road space are also relatively
more cumbersome. Despite these challenges, little research has been
conducted to identify the factors contributing to the occurrences of this
type of crashes.
This study aims to identify the factors delineating a primary crash
that resulted in a CC from a regular crash that did not result in any CCs.
Random-effects, random parameter and two-level binary logistic
2
Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054
regression models are applied to data collected on 8779 crashes on the
freeway network of Guizhou Province, China in 2018. To avoid biased
results caused by unobserved spatial heterogeneity and hierarchical
structure in the data, a random-effects (RE) binary logistic model, a
random parameter (RP) binary logistic model and a two-level logistic
model are estimated, and their performances in predicting the likelihood
of causing CCs are compared. Based on the results of the best fitting
model, policy implications and recommendation are provided to prevent
and mitigate the effects of CCs.
2. Data
The crash database used in this study was provided by Guizhou
Traffic Information and Emergency Control Center, affiliated with the
Department of Transportation of the Guizhou Province. The data were
originally recorded by onsite traffic police officers for all crashes on
national, provincial and local freeways in the province. Data on the
speed limit and monthly traffic volume in 2018 were provided by the
Department of Transportation of the Guizhou Province.
The definition of CC in this study refers to the definition of secondary
crash with fixed space and time thresholds, taking into consideration the
differences in the mechanisms between these two types of crashes. As
queuing effect should not play a role in CCs, considerably shorter
thresholds have been incorporated in defining CCs (Meng et al., 2020;
Yang et al., 2018). Hence, in this study, CCs were identified using two
conditions: (1) more than one crashes took place within 1 km in the
same direction of the freeway within 1 min, and (2) primary crash
occurred on the downstream traffic of all subsequent crashes. In total,
there were 299 CCs on Guizhou freeways in 2018, with an average of
2.51 secondary crashes per primary crash. To identify factors associated
with the occurrences of CCs, data on 8480 other crashes that neither
caused nor were involved in any CCs were also extracted. Hence, there
were 8779 observations used in this study. For a CC, only the primary
crash was used in the analysis.
Besides information on the crash characteristics and vehicles
involved, the crash database also included information on several
environmental factors, such as the date, time, weather and location of
each crash. In this study the time of crash was recoded into six cate­
gories: dawn (3 a.m. to 6.59 a.m.), morning (7 a.m. to 10.59 a.m.), noon
(11 a.m. to 2.59 p.m.), afternoon (3 p.m. to 6.59 p.m.), evening (7 p.m.
to 10.59 p.m.) and night (11 p.m. to 2.59 a.m. of the next day). These
categories were used in several previous studies (Meng et al., 2017a, b;
Pei et al., 2012).
Crashes at special locations of the freeway (tunnel, ramp and open
road) were assumed to create different risks for the occurrence of CCs
compared to those happening on an open road because the driving en­
vironments at these locations might have different effects on drivers’
hazard perception and reaction.
The severity of the crashes was extracted from the crash database and
adopted as an indicator variable, as it includes comprehensive infor­
mation at the time the collision occurs such as the hitting mechanisms,
speed before collision and/or at-fault driver information (Alogaili and
Mannering, 2020; Liu and Khattak, 2017; Duddu et al., 2018; Wang
et al., 2019; Wen and Xue, 2020; Zhou and Chin, 2019). Crash severity is
defined as a dichotomous variable: 1 for crash causing at least one injury
and 0 for crash with property damage only (PDO).
In this study, vehicles were classified into two main categories: (1)
light vehicles which included two- and three-wheels vehicles, passenger
cars and light commercial vehicles, and (2) heavy vehicles which
included trucks, buses and trailer trucks. Heavy vehicles deserve more
attention in this study as these vehicles are large in sizes and tend to
induce more and propagate the hazardous driving conditions further to
vehicles following behind them. Note that a crash may involve more
than one vehicle and all vehicles involved are considered in this study.
Crash-related characteristics used in the models included crash type
and number of vehicles. These factors would represent different types of
Z. Zichu et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054

hazards that a primary crash might induce, resulting in different

∑
k
perception and reaction of drivers in vehicles following behind. The logit(πij ) = log(
πij
) = β0 + βk Xijk + εij (1)
base-line crash type (other crash types) consisted mainly of mild single- 1 − πij 1
vehicle crash types such as hitting freeway fixtures and slipping into
road-side ditches. where Xijk is the value of the k th independent variable for crash i on road
The descriptive statistics of the variables incorporated in the models segment j, β0 is the intercept of the model, βk is the estimated coefficient
are reported in Table 1. The mean and standard deviations (SDs) for for Xijk , and εij is the random error term following a logistic distribution.
continuous variable (traffic volume) are provided. Categorical variables
were coded into dummy variables, and the percentage of each category 3.2. Random-effects logistic model
were displayed.
Unobserved heterogeneity has been shown to widely exist in road
3. Methods crash modeling (Mannering and Bhat, 2014; Mannering et al., 2016;
Anastasopoulos and Mannering, 2009; Meng et al., 2019; Rusli et al.,
3.1. Binary logistic regression 2018). To account for this unobserved heterogeneity, a random effects
(RE) modeling approach is adopted by incorporating a random intercept
The aim of this study is to identify the factors delineating a primary term, νi , with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of σ ν . The RE logistic
crash that results in secondary crashes within a minute from a regular function is described as follows:
crash that does not result in any secondary crashes. Since the outcome
πij ∑
k
variable is binary, the widely used the binary logistic regression is a logit(πij ) = log( ) = β0 + βk Xijk + νi + εij (2)
suitable method to analyze the data (Chin and Huang, 2009; Meng et al., 1 − πij 1

2017a,b; Nguyen-Phuoc et al., 2019; Theofilatos et al., 2019). A maximum likelihood estimation method is applied to estimate the
Let Yij denote the outcome of crash i on road segment j. Yij = 1 if coefficients, β0 and βk (McFadden, 1973). In addition to the variance, σ2ν ,
crash i is a primary crash and Yij = 0 if crash i is not a primary crash. The the proportion of variance explained by the panel effect is also
probability of Yij = 1 (denoted as πij ) is given by (McFadden, 1973): estimated:

Table 1
Descriptive statistics.
Variable name Description Mean/ Percentage SD Minimum Maximum

Dependent variable
Yes 3.4
Primary crash of consecutive crashes
No 96.6
Independent variables
Continuous variables:
Hourly traffic volume Hourly flow rate of the hour that the crash occurs, in thousand vehicles per hour 2.3 1.22 0.05 5.75
Categorical variables (%):
Crash severity Severe crash 1.2
Property damage only (base) 98.8
Speed limit 120 km/h 86.4
100 km/h 5.7
80 km/h (base) 7.9
Road geometry Curved line (radius>2000 m) 16.7
Curved line (500 m ≤ radius<2000 m) 35.1
Curved line (radius<500 m) 4.4
Straight line (base) 43.8
Location Tunnel 5.3
Ramp 4.4
Others (base) 90.3
Time period Dawn (3:00− 6:59) 6.0
Morning (7:00− 10:59) 16.8
Noon (11:00− 14:59, base) 24.5
Afternoon (15:00− 18:59) 25.4
Evening (19:00− 22:59) 18.1
Night (23:00− 2:59) 9.2
Truck involved in crash 26.6
Truck involvement
No truck involved 73.4
Trailer truck involved in crash 7.0
Trailer truck involvement
No trailer truck involved 93.0
Bus involvement Bus involved in crash 1.0
No bus involved 99.0
Crash type Rear-end 36.7
Rollover 5.5
Side-swipe 4.7
Others (base) 53.0
Weather Rainy 19.1
Foggy 62.5
frozen 1.5
Sunny (base) 16.9
Single-vehicle 58.1
Number of vehicles Double-vehicle 29.8
Multi-vehicle (base) 12.2

3
Z. Zichu et al.
σ 2ν
ρ= (3)
σ ν + σ2ε
2
where σ 2ε is the variance of εij .
Note that the proportion of consecutive crashes is relatively small.
This skewness can be addressed using an asymmetric distribution for the
error term (e.g., Burr-10 which gives rise to the skewed logistic model;
Tay, 2016; Jiang et al., 2021) or random intercept term. In study, a
random intercept with several different distributions, including asym­
metric distribution such as the lognormal distribution, were tested and
the model with the best fit was reported.
3.3. Random parameter logistic model
The RE model is sometimes considered as a special case of a random
parameter (RP) model where only the constant term is assumed to be
random (Washington et al., 2020). In the RP model, the estimated co­
efficients for one or more independent variables are assumed to vary
across the observations. The RP logistic function is given by:
βik = βk + μik (4)
where βik is the k th estimated coefficient for observation i, βk is the
estimated mean of the k th coefficient, and μik is a random term
following a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a variance of σ2k .
A simulated maximum likelihood estimation method with 200 Hal­
ton draws is applied to estimate the coefficients, βk and σk (McFadden,
1973). A z-test is applied to each estimated coefficient, and only co­
efficients with a significant mean, βk , and a significant standard devia­
tion (S.D.), σ k , are retained in the model as random coefficients.
3.4. Two-level logistic model
To address the issue of spatial heterogeneity across road segments, a
two-level modeling scheme is adopted (Huang and Abdel-Aty, 2010). In
this study, level 1 is the crash and level 2 is the road-segment. The basic
binary logistic function can be rewritten in a two-level scheme as
follows:
( )
(
πij
) ∑K
logit πij = log = β0j + β1jk Xijk + εij (5)
1 − π ij
k=1
where β0j is the crash-level intercept and β1jk is the estimated coef­
ficient for Xijk . The road-segment-level model is specified as:
∑
L
β0j = γ00 + γ 0l Zjl + μ0j (6)
l=1
β1jk = γ1k + μ1jk (7)
where γ 00 and γ 1k are estimated intercepts on the road segment level; Zjl
is l th independent variable representing environmental factors of road
segment j, and γ 0l is the estimated coefficient for Zjl ; μ0j and μ1jk are the
random effects varying across road segments for the crash-level inter­
cept and crash-level covariate k with means of zero and variances of σo 2
and σ k 2 , respectively (Snijders and Bosker, 1999). Note that the random
effects, μ0j and μ1jk , are random across road segments and constant for all
crashes on the same road segment, which enables unobservable spatial
effects to vary among the road segments (Kim et al., 2007).
A simulated maximum likelihood estimation method with 200 Hal­
ton draws is applied to estimate the coefficients (McFadden, 1973;
Train, 2009). A z-test was applied to each estimated coefficient to ac­
quire the statistical significance level. The road segments in this study is
defined by the Transport Department for management purpose and vary
between 40− 80 km in length.
4
Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054
3.5. Model comparison
In this study, the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) is used to select
the best fitting model. AIC reflects the amount of information loss in
each model (Akaike, 1973) and is estimated by:
̂
AIC = 2n − 2ln( L) (8)
where n is the number of estimated parameters, and ̂L is the maximum
value of the likelihood function for the model. The model with the
lowest AIC value has the best performance in terms of using as few pa­
rameters as possible to maximize the likelihood function of the model.
4. Results
To identify the significant factors causing a series of CCs, three
models were estimated using the RE, RP and two-level binary logistic
regressions. The same dataset was used in all models with the same sets
of dependent and independent variables. Before the regressions were
performed, Pearson correlation tests were conducted for all pairs of in­
dependent variables. All Pearson correlation values were smaller than
0.6, implying that there was no significant correlation among the in­
dependent variables. To check whether specification errors exist in the
model, Ramsey’s Regression Equation Specification Error Test (i.e.,
RESET test) have been conducted (Ramsey, 1969; Gujarati, 2009;
Ramalho and Ramlho, 2012; Tay, 2005a, b, 2003). The result of the
RESET test didn’t reject the null hypothesis, indicating that there was no
significant bias resulting from the omission of significant independent
variables or other general specification bias in the model
For the RE model, the S.D. of the random term, σ ν , and the proportion
of variance, ρ, were both estimated. Variables with insignificant coeffi­
cient at the 90 % have been removed. As shown in Table 2, 10 estimated
parameters were significant at the 95 % confidence level, among which
4 were positive and 6 were negative, with an additional one variable
being marginally significant at 90 % confidence level. The standard
deviation of the random intercept was insignificant, and the ρ value was
very low (2.55 × 10− 4 ), indicating that there was little or no
heterogeneity.
To establish a RP logistic model, all parameters (including the con­
stant) were initially set to be random. Those with a significant mean and
a significant S.D. at the 0.05 level were included in the next step as
random parameters, and the rest of the parameters were set to be fixed.
For the fixed parameters, only those whose estimated coefficient were
significant at the 90 % level were kept. The final results of the RP model
were shown in Table 2. The parameter for “single-vehicle crash” were
the only random parameter in the RP model, whose mean and S.D. were
both significant at the 0.001 level, and the rest were all fixed parame­
ters. 10 estimated fixed parameters were significant at the 95 % confi­
dence level while one additional variable was marginally significant at
the 90 % confidence level.
The estimation results of the two-level logistic model are shown in
Table 2. The estimated random term of “rear-end” was significant at the
95 % confidence level. All insignificant fixed coefficients have been
removed from the final model. Ten fixed coefficients were significant at
the 95 % confidence level and one additional variable was marginally
significant at the 90 % confidence level. For all categorical variables
included in the model, at least one category was significant at the 95 %
confidence level.
In terms of goodness-of-fit measures, the two-level model achieved a
larger log-likelihood value (-800.22) compared with the RP model
(-1167.73) and the RE model (-1177.00). Moreover, the AIC value of the
two-level model (1632.4) were much smaller than those of the RP model
(2365.5) and the RE model (2378.0). Therefore, the two-level model
outperformed the RP model and the RE model by addressing the hier­
archical nature of the data and accounting for the within-road-segment
correlations. Hence, marginal effects were calculated for the two-level
Z. Zichu et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054

Table 2
Estimation results for RE, RP and two-level regressions.
Variables RE model RP model Two-level model

Coefficient Std Err p-value Coefficient Std Err p-value Coefficient Std Err p-value

Fixed parameters
Road geometry:
- Curved line (radius>2000 m) − 0.694*** 0.200 0.001 − 0.080*** 0.231 0.001
Crash severity:
- Severe crash 1.573*** 0.783 0.045
Speed limit:
- 120 km/h 1.397*** 0.457 0.002
Location:
- Tunnel 0.902*** 0.183 0.000 1.102*** 0.211 0.000 2.148*** 0.461 0.000
Vehicle involvement:
- Truck involvement − 0.990*** 0.186 0.000 − 1.239*** 0.250 0.000 − 1.378*** 0.530 0.009
- Bus involvement 0.810* 0.416 0.052 1.008** 0.480 0.036 1.103* 0.651 0.090
Crash type:
- Rear-end 1.078*** 0.137 0.000 1.199*** 0.173 0.000 1.381*** 0.336 0.000
- Rollover 1.120*** 0.270 0.000 1.569*** 0.344 0.000 1.136** 0.488 0.020
Weather:
- Foggy 0.526*** 0.138 0.000 0.683*** 0.173 0.000 0.904*** 0.259 0.001
Number of vehicles:
- Single-vehicle crash − 0.622*** 0.128 0.000 − 5.897*** 1.914 0.002 − 0.659*** 0.229 0.004
Time period:
- Dawn − 0.940* 0.541 0.082
- Evening − 0.459*** 0.174 0.008 − 0.680*** 0.215 0.002 − 0.977*** 0.351 0.005
- Night − 1.239*** 0.374 0.001 − 1.666*** 0.533 0.002 − 1.643** 0.730 0.025
Constant − 3.696*** 0.169 0.000 − 3.872*** 0.207 0.000 − 5.688*** 0.555 0.000
Random parameters (S.D.)
Single-vehicle crash – – – 4.277*** 1.052 0.000 0.047 0.474 0.921
Truck – – – – – – 0.817 0.579 0.158
Rear-end – – – – – – 0.721** 0.353 0.041
Constant (σν ) 0.026 0.719 0.971 – – – 0.112 0.539 0.835
ρ 2.55E-4 2.05E-4 – – – – – – –
Number of observations 8779 8779 8779
Log-likelihood at convergence − 1177.00 − 1169.73 − 800.22
McFadden Pseudo R-squared 0.807 0.808 0.868
Chi-square 9816.29 9830.83 10569.83
AIC 2378.0 2365.5 1632.4

*, ** & *** denote statistically significant at the 90 %, 95 % & 99 % confidence level.

logistic model to reflect the quantitative impact of each significant probability to be negative in some segments. As law enforcement and the
variable on the propensity of CC occurrence. The marginal effects results driving environment may vary across road segments (40− 80 km),
are shown in Table 3. driving in different road segments may be associated with different
alertness levels and driving behaviors, leading to different probabilities
5. Discussion for a CC to occur.
As shown in Table 3, a rear end crash has 59.4 % higher probability
As the two-level binary logistic regression has a better performance to incur CCs in its behind than hitting objects. The positive effect of a
than the RE and the RP model, the following discussions are based on the rear end crash is consistent with the findings of Yang et al. (2013)’s
results of the two-level binary logistic regression. study on secondary crashes. A rear-end crash is often caused by the rapid
Rear-end crashes is the only variable that has a significant random deceleration of a lead vehicle in a queue, which has been found in
effect (β = 0.721; p = 0.041), together with a significant and positive simulation studies to cause chain-reaction crashes in the same lane
fixed effect (β = 1.381; p < 0.001). Note that although this effect varies (Sugiyama and Nagatani, 2013). Given that the traffic on an expressway
across road segments, it is mainly positive and has only a small is likely to consists of a mixture of vehicle types that are controlled by
drivers with different driving experiences and levels of skills, the hazard
perceptions and reactions of these drivers can be quite different. Hence,
Table 3 the hazards tend to spread non-linearly backwards and cause consecu­
Results of marginal effects of the two-level logistic regression. tive crashes.
Variable Marginal effect Compared to rear-end crashes, a rollover crash has a relatively
Severe crash 0.017***
weaker positive fixed effect (β = 1.136; p < 0.020), meaning that a
120 km/h 1.149*** rollover crash has a higher likelihood to trigger a CCs compared to other
Tunnel 0.097*** crash types (mainly hitting roadside objects crashes). A rollover crash is
Truck involvement − 0.193*** often the result of a driver losing control of his/her vehicle which is
Rear-end 0.594***
likely to cause considerable disruption on the surrounding vehicles and
Rollover 0.061***
Foggy 0.531*** an adverse effect on vehicles following behind.
Single-vehicle crash − 0.371*** Compared to crashes without trucks involvement, crashes with
Evening − 0.172*** trucks involved are less likely (β = -1.378; p = 0.009) to cause CCs in the
Night − 0.149*** traffic behind. A crash involving trucks is found to have 19.3 % lower
Constant − 0.081***
probability to cause CCs. Karlaftis et al. (1999) found that the involve­
***
denote the marginal effect was significant at the 99 % ment of trucks and semi-trucks increased the likelihood of a secondary
level.

5
Z. Zichu et al.
crash due to queueing effect. However, the effect of truck involvement
on secondary crashes is different when the secondary crashes are sup­
posed to occur immediately after the primary crash when traffic queue
has not been formed. Trucks on freeways have been shown to produce
lower risks for both single- and multiple-vehicle crashes as the average
driving speed drops with increasing proportion of trucks in the traffic
(Hiselius, 2004; Dominique Lord et al., 2005; Wang and Feng, 2019).
The massive size and weight of a truck serve as a natural warning to
other drivers. Drivers, especially the experienced ones, tend to keep a
longer headway or lower the speed while driving behind a truck on a
freeway to maintain an adequate sight distance and minimize the risk of
a crash.
The estimated coefficient for single-vehicle crashes was statistically
significant. The estimate for the mean effect is negative (β = -0.659; p =
0.004), and the marginal effect implies that single-vehicle crashes are
37.1 % less likely to trigger CCs on a freeway compared to a crash with 2
or more vehicles involved. A single-vehicle crash often creates less
disruption in the road as it is common for the vehicle to run off the road
and hits a roadside object in this type of crash (Wang and Feng, 2019).
The estimated coefficient for tunnel is positive and significant (β =
2.148; p < 0.001), and its marginal effect implies a crash happening in a
tunnel has a 9.7 % higher likelihood than a crash on an open freeway to
trigger secondary CCs. Previous research has discussed the negative ef­
fects of the constrained driving environment and reduced visibility in
road tunnels on traffic safety and crash risks (Caliendo et al., 2019; Ma
et al., 2016; Mehri et al., 2019; Yeung and Wong, 2013). These factors
may also distract drivers from promptly reacting to hazards that a
downstream crash produces. Moreover, given the constrained space
inside a freeway tunnel, it is more likely for the hazards to propagate
farther behind rather than diffuse quickly.
The posted speed limit at 120 km/h has a significant positive coef­
ficient (β = 1.397; p = 0.002), implying that a crash on the freeway
segment with a high speed limit (120 km/h) is associated with a higher
likelihood of a CC compared to the segment with a speed limit at 80 km/
h. The marginal effect (1.149) indicates that there is a 1.149 times
higher probability for a CC to occur on a higher-speed freeway (120 km/
h) than on a lower-speed freeway (80 km/h). At a higher speed, drivers
will have less time to react to any sudden incident in the downstream
traffic (Sarker et al., 2017), which will result in a higher likelihood of a
CC.
Compared to crashes occurring during “noon” (1100− 1459 h),
crashes occurring during “evening” (1900− 2259 h; β = -0.977, p =
0.005) and “night” (2300− 0259 hrs; β = -1.643, p = 0.025) and are less
likely to result in CCs. These results indicate that a crash taking place in a
poorer natural lighting condition has a lower probability to trigger
secondary crashes immediately. This result is consistent with Zhan et al.
(2009)’s finding that the daytime period (0600− 1900 hrs) has a rela­
tively higher propensity for secondary crashes to occur. Nagatani (2015)
suggests that drivers mostly follow the taillights of the vehicles in front
when driving in poor lighting condition and may compensate for the
increased risk due to poorer sight distance by leaving a larger gap when
following behind another vehicle.
Relative to clear weather, foggy weather has a significant and posi­
tive coefficient (β = 0.904, p = 0.001). The marginal effect implies that a
crash happening on a foggy day has a 53.1 % higher likelihood to trigger
CCs. Since foggy weather reduces visibility and affects drivers’ cognitive
capacities (Deng et al., 2019; Outay et al., 2019), it may be more difficult
for drivers to avoid the adverse consequences of a primary crash in the
front within a short period of time.
Crash severity has a significantly positive coefficient (β = 1.573, p =
0.045). Compared to PDO crashes, a severe crash has a 1.7 % higher
likelihood to incur CCs in the upstream traffic. This effect is expected as
more severe crashes may distract other drivers more and cause more
congestion and traffic disruption. Also, crash severity may represent
comprehensive information, such as hitting angle, lane positions and/or
driving errors, etc. Therefore, a severe crash on a freeway is associated
6
Accident Analysis and Prevention 154 (2021) 106054
with greater interactions between vehicles and enormous energy dissi­
pation (Meng et al., 2020), and is thus more likely to influence the up­
stream traffic nearby and causes subsequent crashes in a short period of
time.
6. Conclusion
This paper investigates the effects of various factors related to a
primary crash that are more likely to trigger a CC. 8779 crashes on the
freeway network of Guizhou Province, China were extracted, among
which 299 were the primary crash of a consecutive crash. To account for
the possible unobserved heterogeneity and hierarchical nature existing
in the dataset, a RE, a RP and a two-level binary logistic regression
models were estimated. Based on the AIC values, the two-level binary
logistics model outperformed the RE and the RP model, indicating that
there was significant spatial heterogeneity that varies across the road
segment. Based on the results of the two-level model, rear-end crashes
were found to have both fixed and random effects on the occurrences of
consecutive crashes on a freeway. Other factors including foggy weather
and tunnel were found to be positively associated with the occurrences
of CCs. Single-vehicle crash, truck involvement and nigh time (7 pm − 3
am) were found to be negatively associated with CCs.
Based on the results, several policies on traffic management are
recommended to prevent the occurrence of CCs. Warning signs should
be placed where multiple-vehicle crashes tend to occur, such as ramps,
tunnels and toll stations, especially on roads that have relatively high
traffic volume and speed. Novice drivers should be educated about these
high-risk areas and to keep a sufficiently long headway when following
the front vehicle. Moreover, the police and other emergency services are
advised to be more alert about the occurrences of rear-end and roll-over
crashes, and to develop targeted incident management plans for them,
especially around noon time.
The amount of information provided in the dataset for this study to
investigate the contributing factors is quite limited and more research
should be conducted to explore other potential contributing factors.
Future research can consider other characteristics of a CC, such as lateral
position of the primary CC, the number of secondary crashes and their
severity levels, and to model the relationships between these charac­
teristics and potential contributing factors. Vehicle-level or driver-level
factors such as driver characteristics, driving errors and violations are
also suggested to be considered as potential predictors that impacts the
occurrences of CCs. Traffic flow models can be developed to compare the
theoretical mechanism of consecutive crashes with chain-reaction
crashes.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Zhou Zichu: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Project
administration. Meng Fanyu: Formal analysis, Funding acquisition,
Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing. Song Cancan: Data curation, Project administration. Tay
Richard: Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing -
review & editing. Guo Zhongyin: Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Yang Lili: Supervision, Funding acquisition. Wang Weili: Funding
acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors report no declarations of interest.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Founda­
tion of China under Grant 71771113, National Key R&D Program of
China under grant 2018YFC0807000, National Key R&D Program of
China under Grant 2019YFC0810705, and the Shanghai Sail Program
Z. Zichu et al.
under Grant 19YF1451800. We would also like to acknowledge the
Guizhou Transport Information and Emergency Control Center and
Department of Transportation of Guizhou Province for providing the
crash database and the traffic volume data.
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