01594149

Component

This paper presents an analysis of the level of safety on a multi-lane rural highway operating in plain and rolling terrain and under heterogeneous traffic conditions by developing safety performance functions (SPFs). The study involves collection of data and information about the various elements contributing to crash occurrence like roadway characteristics, traffic conditions and environmental characteristics. Due to the random variation and rareness of crashes, Poisson regression and Negative binomial of count data modeling approach were used. Zero-Inflated models were also developed to verify the level of significance of the dependent variable (crash) with excess zeros. The study enabled better understanding of the influence of geometric design elements on road crashes under heterogeneous traffic conditions and provided insight on the significant effect of operating speed on curves and tangent sections along the highway, on the crashes. One of the major contributions of the present study is the analysis on the effect of operating speed of highway on the safety performance. The methodology may be used for the evaluation of safety performance of multi-lane rural highways and for the development of the geometric design guidelines for multi-lane rural highways under heterogeneous traffic conditions, duly considering the level of safety.

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

01584066

16-6768

English

16p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Heterogeneity; Multilane highways; Rural highways; Traffic characteristics; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-6768

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 6:56PM