Driver Expectancy In Highway Design And Traffic Operations PDF Download

The traffic engineering profession has a long history of expending considerable effort to make our streets and highways safer for the driving public. Despite considerable success in this regard, the reality remains that traffic accidents continue to occur on our roadways regardless of the relatively advanced state of knowledge about safety issues. Moreover, despite claims of high quality 'safe' roads, roadway authorities are increasingly confronted with claims of negligence from tort liability cases brought forward due to the injury and death associated with severe accidents. In an effort to understand this apparent conflict, the basic principles of tort law are reviewed and related to the standards of practice of the traffic engineering profession respecting the provision of safe roads for the driving public. In particular, the principles of driver expectancy and positive guidance are reviewed, and their inclusion in existing standards of practice identified. It is concluded that: 1) The key principle of safety is driver expectancy; the principle is scientifically well founded, has broad implications with very high explanatory power, and is intuitively appealing to traffic professionals, the driving public and the courts alike; 2) the driver expectancy principle is integrally imbedded in the standards of practice for the design, control and operation of safe roads; expectancy is considered by the traffic engineering profession to be of primary and critical importance in all considerations related to the provision of safe roads for the driving public, and 3) all road sections must be evaluated from a safety perspective using the principle of driver expectancy and positive guidance; when a situation of expectancy violation is determined, the road must either be reconstructed to meet existing standards, or appropriate steps taken to modify driver expectancy such that the section is no longer a hazard to the driving public (ie., positive guidance). The paper concludes with a challenge to traffic professionals to maximize safety and minimize liability by using driver expectancy and positive guidance principles in their road safety and countermeasure programs. For the covering abstract of the Conference see IRRD Abstract No. 807661.