01664810

Component

The Virginia Department of Transportation has installed centerline rumble strips on a number of rural two-lane roads to reduce head-on and opposite direction sideswipe crashes. This paper calculated crash modification factors (CMF) for installing centerline rumble strips by applying the empirical Bayes methodology, with a focus on evaluating the effectiveness by roadway curvature. Centerline rumble strips on curves with a design speed of less than or equal to 55 mph reduced total crashes by 25% (CMF 0.75) with a standard error (SE) of 0.14, significant at 90% confidence level and head-on, opposite direction sideswipe, and fixed object, off-road crashes by 42% (CMF 0.58, SE 0.16). Other analyses that examined the safety effect of centerline rumble strips as a function of curve design speed showed promising trends, but were inconclusive, likely due to small sample sizes. For tangents, a 37% decrease in total crashes (SE 0.10) and a 46% decrease in fatal and injury crashes (SE 0.11) were observed. When examining all roads irrespective of curvature, the study found a CMF of 0.93 for total crashes (SE 0.03), and a CMF of 0.65 for head-on and opposite direction sideswipe crashes (SE 0.09) for both total and fatal and injury severities. With the exception noted, all reductions were significant at 95% confidence level. CMFs for several other situations were produced that support the assertion that centerline rumble strips are a beneficial treatment for rural two-lane roads.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB25 Standing Committee on Highway Safety Performance.

18-05020

English

19p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Center lines; Highway curves; Rumble strips; Rural highways; Traffic crashes; Two lane highways

Virginia Department of Transportation

Virginia

Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-05020

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:15AM