01515420

Component

Improving freeway safety is a global mission. Various treatments are available in order to reduce the incidence and/or severity of collisions. Speed management is an appealing strategy because of its potential to impact frequency and severity of collisions. This study aims at evaluating the safety impact of reducing the speed limit on two major freeways in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from 160 km/h to 140 km/h. A third freeway with unchanged speed limit was used as a comparison. Data was made available from the Abu Dhabi Police Head Quarters that includes collision records, frequency, location, and severity, along the three freeways in this study. Five years of collision records have been studied. Four years before the treatment and one year after. Average Annual Daily Traffic, lengths of road segments, number of lanes at each segment, speed treatment, existence of trucks, and construction works along the road are all considered as covariates in the developed collision prediction models. Furthermore, these models were developed for minor, intermediate, serious injury, fatal, and total number of collisions. An Empirical Bayes before and after analysis was conducted in order to investigate the safety impact of the treatment.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Transportation in the Developing Countries. Alternate title: Study of Safety Impact of Speed Limit Reduction on Freeways in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

01503729

14-5667

English

18p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Annual average daily traffic; Bayes' theorem; Crash data; Crashes; Freeways; Highway safety; Speed limits

Abu Zaby (United Arab Emirates)

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-5667

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 3:59PM