Analysis of Fatal Traffic Crash-Reporting and Reporting-Arrival Time Intervals of Emergency Medical Services

Abstract

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) play a vital role in the postcrash effort to reduce fatalities by providing first aid and transportation to medical facilities. This study aims to analyze the time required for crash reporting and EMS arrival in fatal traffic crashes and to identify relevant crash, roadway, environmental and zonal socio-economic factors. The time required for EMS reporting and arrivals were calculated by location type (urban or rural) and roadway functional classification using Florida data. Subsequently, a variety of duration models were estimated to reveal the contributing factors for crash-reporting and reporting-arrival intervals. Although about 90% of fatal crashes are reported to EMS within ten minutes in both urban and rural settings, EMS average reporting time in rural areas (4.5 min) is greater than that in urban areas (3 min). Moreover, freeways require longer time for EMS arrival (8.3 min) compared with conventional roadways (6.8 min). It was shown that the log-logistic and gamma models performed the best for crash-reporting and reporting-arrival intervals, respectively. The modeling results revealed that both EMS reporting and arrival times are related to the crash, roadway, environmental, and socio-economic factors. The key findings indicate that EMS reporting and arrival times differ significantly according to the urban or rural designation and road functional classification, and that they have statistically significant relationship with various factors. It is expected that the findings from this study can be used to develop effective and practical strategic plans to minimize EMS reporting and arrival times and, therefore, decrease the likelihood of fatalities.