This research identifies roadway, traffic, and environmental factors that influence the injury severity of road traffic crashes in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka provides a rather unusual driving-risk environment to study because virtually anyone in Dhaka can obtain a driver's license, traffic enforcement is lax, and few fines are given when drivers violate traffic rules. To examine this city with presumed heightened crash severity risk, the authors collected police-reported crash data from 2007 to 2011 containing about 2,714 road traffic crashes. The injury severity of traffic crashes—recorded as fatal injury, serious injury, or property damage only—was modeled with an ordered probit model. Significant factors increasing the probability of fatal injuries included crashes along highways (65%), absence of a road divider (80%), crashes during night time (54%), and vehicle–pedestrian collisions (367%); two-way traffic configuration (21%) and traffic police–controlled schemes (41%) decreased the probability of fatalities. Both similarities and differences of the findings between crash risk in Dhaka and that in developed countries are discussed in policy-relevant terms.
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