Injury Risk of Traffic Accidents Involving Emergency Vehicles in Alberta

Emergency vehicles (ambulances, police cars and fire trucks) are deployed for rescuing people in an emergency. Crash statistics for Alberta, Canada indicate that more than 300 road traffic accidents every year involve at least one emergency vehicle. The aim of this study is to identify the factors that may have an influence on the probability of injury in crashes involving emergency vehicles in Alberta from 2004 to 2007. The results from our binary logit model show that these crashes are less likely to be injurious during off-peak hour, when it is a single-vehicle accident, or when the driver is male. The risk of injury increases when the drive violates a stop or yield sign, disobeys a traffic signal or when the vehicle hits a fixed object.