Safety Research Needs Related to Highway Infrastructure

1
Safety Research Needs Related to Highway
Infrastructure

• AAAFTS Research Agenda Planning Workshop
• Doug Harwood
• Midwest Research Institute
• October 2005

2
Key Topics for Research

• Bicycle safety
• Evaluation of countermeasures
• Identification of new countermeasures
• Intersection safety
• ITS/vehicle-infrastructure communication
• Pedestrian safety

3
Key Topics for Research

• Reducing lane departures/keeping vehicles on the
  roadway
• Roadside design/reducing the consequences of
  leaving the roadway
• Roadway design/reducing multiple-vehicle
  collisions at nonintersection locations
• Safety management

4
Key Topics for Research

• Speed-management
• Vehicle-train crashes
• Work zone safety

5
Bicycle Safety

• Quantify differences in performance between
  bicycle facility types
• marked lane vs. wide curb lane vs. side path
• Validate relationship of bicycle rating indices
  to crash data

6
Evaluation of Countermeasures

• Quantitative estimates of accident modification
  factors (AMFs) or crash reduction factors (CRFs)
• complete planned evaluations in FHWA pooled-fund
  study and F-SHRP
• refine statistical analysis techniques (e.g.,
  Empirical Bayes vs. Full Bayes)

7
Identification of New Countermeasures

• Planned F-SHRP study of driving behavior using
  instrumented vehicles and roadside cameras

8
Intersection Safety

• Determine magnitude, characteristics, and root
  causes of intersection accidents
• Establish root causes of driver error
• Relationship of safety to alternative
  intersection controls
• Relationship of safety to alternative left-turn
  phasing

9
Intersection Safety

• Safety effects of alternative signal layouts
• Safety effects of intersection sight distance
• Safety effectiveness of driver response to
  all-red signal extension system
• Relationship between safety and congestion levels

10
ITS/Vehicle-Infrastructure Communication

• Collision avoidance
• Incident detection and response

11
Pedestrian Safety

• Effectiveness of safety improvement strategies
• Better understanding of how social and
  demographic factors (e.g., neighborhood
  characteristics) affect walking and pedestrian
  safety
• ADA concerns (beyond NCHRP Project 3-78)

12
Reducing Lane Departures/Keeping Vehicles on the
Roadway

• Effective use of rumble strips on nonfreeways
• Effective traffic control devices to reduce
  run-off-road accidents on horizontal curves
• Safety benefits of delineation

13
Roadside Design/Reducing the Consequences of
Leaving the Roadway

• Develop and apply roadway inventory data bases
• Determine appropriate applications and quantify
  benefits of cable barriers, including
  high-tensioned barriers
• Improve cost-effectiveness tools such as RSAP

14
Roadway Design/Reducing Multiple-Vehicle
Collisions at Nonintersection Locations

• Relationships between safety and congestion
• Better quantitative estimates of the safety
  effects of access management techniques
• Extending safety analysis tools (such as IHSDM)
  to address new facility types
• Methods to improve incident response times

15
Safety Management

• Continue HSM, SafetyAnalyst, and USRAP
• Develop safety decisionmaking aids for planners
• Develop roadway segment inventories, especially
  for local agencies
• Develop intersection inventory data bases

16
Safety Management

• Expand use of GIS tools for safety analysis
• Complete an extensive program of countermeasure
  evaluation

17
Speed Management

• Effectiveness of automated enforcement
• Effect of conventional enforcement on speeds and
  safety
• Use of geometric design and traffic control
  devices to influence speeds and safety

18
Vehicle-Train Crashes

• Quantify safety effectiveness of alternative
  active and passive traffic control devices

19
Work Zone Safety

• Estimate work-zone exposure characteristics from
  FIMS
• Develop VMT temporal distributions to estimate
  work-zone exposure
• Incorporate work-zone data elements into crash
  investigations
• Investigate completeness of work-zone crash
  reporting

20
Work Zone Safety

• Feasibility and validity of region-wide work-zone
  crash-risk estimation techniques
• Project-level crash consequences of work-zone
  design features
• Evaluate dynamic queue-end warning systems for
  work zones
• Analyze state work-zone monitoring and management
  programs and procedures

21
Work Zone Safety

• Improve worker safety within work sites
• Criteria for complete road closures/alternative
  routes