00781505

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/1690-04

http://scholar.google.com...iela&publication_year=1999

Highway agencies are continually called upon to make decisions about roadside safety projects by considering their relative benefits and costs. ROADSIDE software is a tool developed in the late 1980s for cost-effectiveness analysis of safety features and has been used by different highway agencies. As a part of the continuing effort to improve such cost-effectiveness procedures, the Roadside Safety Analysis Program (RSAP) has recently been developed at the Texas Transportation Institute. RSAP uses a simulation technique to replicate single-vehicle accidents on a highway facility and can test the effectiveness of the various countermeasures that are used to reduce the severities of these accidents. The application of RSAP to actual case study sites and the outcome of a study recently conducted at Wayne State University are described. Various median treatments on freeways were tested, and their respective benefit-cost ratios, as estimated by RSAP output, were examined. A set of sensitivity analyses of the RSAP output to various input parameters was also conducted. It is found that RSAP is user-friendly software and is fully operational on a personal computer with a Pentium processor in the Windows 95 environment. RSAP provides a summary of the accidents predicted for each scenario tested, and those are segregated by each feature coded along with its respective severity and cost. The economic analysis procedure is based on strong analytic principles, and the results are sensitive to accident cost, cost of construction, and interest rate. The software output is generally sensitive to the input parameters, and the trends appear to be logical. Additional research to calibrate the accident prediction model with historic accident data at the project site will be highly desirable.

This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1690, Roadside Safety and Other General Design Issues.

English

Mak, K K

p. 31-41

1999

Transportation Research Record

0309071208

References (13) ; Tables (11)

Benefit cost analysis; Cost effectiveness; Countermeasures; Crash severity; Economic analysis; Freeways; Medians; Roadside; Safety; Sensitivity analysis; Simulation; Single vehicle crashes

Roadside Safety Analysis Program

Accident costs

Design; Economics; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure

TRIS, TRB

Jan 19 2000 12:00AM

• CHOOSING AN INVENTORY DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM
• CONNECTING MINNESOTA: SUPERHIGHWAYS TO INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAYS
• CRASHWORTHINESS OF ROADSIDE FEATURES ACROSS VEHICLE PLATFORMS
• DEVELOPMENT OF A FLARED END TERMINAL THAT MEETS CRITERIA OF NCHRP REPORT 350: THE REGENT SYSTEM
• DEVELOPMENT OF A FLARED ENERGY-ABSORBING TERMINAL FOR W-BEAM GUARDRAILS
• EFFECTS OF COHESIVE MATERIAL PROPERTIES ON LOCAL SCOUR AROUND PIERS
• EFFECTS OF POST AND SOIL STRENGTH ON PERFORMANCE OF MODIFIED ECCENTRIC LOADER BREAKAWAY CABLE TERMINAL
• FACTORS RELATED TO PROBABILITY OF JOINT FLOODING ON PAIRED STREAMS IN OHIO
• HEAVY-GOODS VEHICLE COLLISIONS WITH STEEL ROAD SAFETY BARRIERS: COMBINED INFLUENCES OF POSITION OF CENTER OF MASS AND TIRE-PAVEMENT FRICTION
• HYDRODYNAMIC COUNTERMEASURES FOR LOCAL PIER SCOUR
• INFRASTRUCTURE INVENTORY AND CONDITION ASSESSMENT USING AIRBORNE LASER TERRAIN MAPPING AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
• REEXAMINATION OF ROADSIDE ENCROACHMENT DATA (WITH DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE)
• RESOURCE SHARING: WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS SITE LEASE RATES
• REUSABLE HIGH-MOLECULAR-WEIGHT, HIGH-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE CRASH CUSHIONS FOR WIDE HAZARDS
• SOME EXPERIENCE WITH GEOSPATIAL IMAGERY AND ROUTE OPTIMIZATION
• SURVEYOR: MOBILE HIGHWAY INVENTORY AND MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
• TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF COLLISION DYNAMICS OF DEFLECTING CONCRETE BARRIERS
• USING LS-DYNA SIMULATION TO SOLVE A DESIGN PROBLEM: BULLNOSE GUARDRAIL EXAMPLE
• VARIATION IN CHARACTERISTICS OF ABRADED ROADWAY PARTICLES AS A FUNCTION OF PARTICLE SIZE: IMPLICATIONS FOR WATER QUALITY AND DRAINAGE
• VIDEOLOG ASSESSMENT OF VEHICLE COLLISION FREQUENCY WITH CONCRETE MEDIAN BARRIERS ON AN URBAN HIGHWAY IN CONNECTICUT