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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Injury Prevention and Control
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1453788
This article is part of the Research Topic Road Traffic Injury Prevention and Control View all 11 articles

Effect of emergency medical service response time on fatality risk of freeway crashes: Bayesian random parameters spatial logistic approach

Provisionally accepted
Peng Huang Peng Huang 1Sheng Ouyang Sheng Ouyang 1Mingming Cai Mingming Cai 1Xiaofei Wang Xiaofei Wang 2*Jaeyoung J. Lee Jaeyoung J. Lee 3Qiang Zeng Qiang Zeng 2*
  • 1 Guangzhou Expressway Co., Ltd., Guangzhou, China
  • 2 South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
  • 3 Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Emergency medical service (EMS) serves as a pivotal role in linking injured road users to hospitals via offering first aid measures and transportation. This paper aims to investigate the effect of emergency medical service (EMS) response time on the fatality risk of freeway crashes.Methods: Crash injury severity data from Kaiyang Freeway, China in 2014 and 2015 are employed for the empirical investigation. A Bayesian random parameters spatial logistic model is developed for analysing crash severity.Results: Bayesian inference of the random parameters spatial logistic model demonstrates the importance of reducing EMS response time on minimizing the fatality risk of freeway crashes. Fatality odds would increase by 2.6% for one minute increase in EMS response time. Additionally, vehicle type, crash type, time of day, horizontal curvature, vertical grade, and precipitation are also found to have significant effects on the fatality probability of freeway crashes.It is crucial to reduce EMS response time to decrease the fatality likelihood of freeway crashes. Some countermeasures have been proposed to shorten EMS response time.

    Keywords: Emergency medical service, Response Time, Fatality risk, freeway crash, random parameters spatial logistic model

    Received: 24 Jun 2024; Accepted: 09 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Huang, Ouyang, Cai, Wang, Lee and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Xiaofei Wang, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510 641, Guangdong Province, China
    Qiang Zeng, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510 641, Guangdong Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.