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Title:

Vehicle Speed and Risk Modeling of Horizontal Curves at a Network Level

Accession Number:

01657017

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Managing the safety of road users traversing horizontal curves is a major issue confronted by road agencies globally. Statistics from the United States and New Zealand show that around 25 percent of fatal and serious crashes occur on horizontal curves. Traditional methods of detecting safety issues tend to involve geospatial analysis of crash data to highlight blackspots and reveal crash trends. Whilst these approaches enable horizontal curves with an established safety problem to be identified, they miss curves with an inherent high level of risk where few crashes have occurred in the past. This paper presents a geospatial risk prediction methodology that models vehicle speeds along high-speed road corridors and assesses the safety risk of horizontal curves based on curve approach speed and curve radii at a network level. Results show that injury crash rates on horizontal curves classified as high-risk using the methodology are approximately 95% higher than other horizontal curves and 450% higher than straight road segments. These findings demonstrate that the horizontal curve risk assessment methodology is a strong indicator of underlying safety risk. Building off this methodology, a prioritization process was developed to identify corridors with the highest risk of curve crashes. This process established that the highest ranked 10% of corridors by length had a curve-related injury crash rate that was 97% higher than the next highest ranked 15% of corridors. This proactive approach of identifying high-risk corridors is helping road agencies across Australasia target their efforts at a comparatively small proportion of the network where a disproportionately large amount of risk exists.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB20 Standing Committee on Safety Data, Analysis and Evaluation.

Report/Paper Numbers:

18-01591

Language:

English

Authors:

Abeysekera, Raja
Brodie, Colin
Durdin, Paul
Gardener, Robyn
Harris, Dale
O'Neil, Carl

Pagination:

18p

Publication Date:

2018

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Maps; References (12)

Geographic Terms:

New Zealand; United States

Subject Areas:

Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-01591

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 8 2018 10:24AM