01590699

Component

The relationship between drivers’ speed and their crash risk has been a topic investigated much but with no unequivocal conclusions. Significant findings on speed and crashes have focused on the average speed, the individual speed, speed variance, and traffic speed dispersion, as related to crash risk. This study investigated speed and safety by conducting a simulator experiment. A heterogeneous sample of 111 mostly-experienced drivers drove four trips of about 8 km each, in free flow conditions. Environmental factors in the experiment included design speed, geometric design of segments, traffic speeds, etc. Situations of various risks and benefits have also been presented to drivers, including enforcement, crash risk, and time-saving benefits. Data resolution in the simulator allowed collecting average speed per segment, a total of 9768 road segment observations. In total, 23 crashes have occurred during the experiment, suggesting some insights into the behavior and factors that frequented these crashes. From the analysis, it became apparent that individual speed variance was significant in predicting crash risk for a driver and for a specific trip. Speed deviation from typical behavior of other drivers also construed a higher crash risk. Implications for speed studies are discussed.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND30 Standing Committee on Simulation and Measurement of Vehicle and Operator Performance.

01584066

16-4950

English

16p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Web

Figures; References (32) ; Tables

Behavior; Crash causes; Drivers; Risk assessment; Speeding; Traffic flow

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

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-4950

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 6:09PM