The Effect Of Segment Characteristics On The Severity Of Head On Crashes On Two Lane Rural Highways PDF Download

Reducing the number and severity of crashes on highways and streets is of high importance for government officials and transportation professionals in the United States. Substantial research has focused on various speed metrics, such as operating speeds and the posted speed limit, and their relationship to safety, such as crash frequency and crash severity. Crash severity is the safety measure most often linked to measures of speed and is based on dissipation of kinetic energy. However, many aspects of the relationships between speed metrics and crash frequency and risk have yet to be studied in depth, so a complete understanding of speeding-related crashes is unknown. Design speeds are used to establish geometric design criteria, and operating speed results from the geometric design process. Posted speed limits may be established based on operating speeds or by statute. When posted speed limits are inconsistent with design or operating speeds, road safety performance may be affected. A more complete understanding of the relationship between safety performance and operating speeds, posted speed limits, and design speeds may produce rational speed limits and lead to improved safety performance on roadways.This research combined real-time vehicle probe speed data, roadway inventory data, and crash data to assess crash risk and crash frequency.This thesis first determined the risk of a crash on two-lane rural highways based on operating speed metrics, differences between speed metrics, and traffic volume data. Results from the crash risk analysis indicate that operating speeds in 1-minute and 5-minute averages improve the statistical fit and prediction of binary logistic regression models. Higher traffic volumes and operating speeds higher than either the road average speed or road reference speed were associated with increased crash risk. Whereas, variations in travel speeds between vehicles were associated with decreased crash risk. This thesis also analyzed the frequency of crashes on horizontal curve segments of two-lane rural roadways using operating speed data, differences among speed metrics, traffic volume data, roadway inventory data, and crash data. Negative binomial regression models improve the statistical fit and prediction of crash frequency models compared to random-effects negative binomial regression. Generally, increases in the differences between operating speed and road average speed and the differences between operating speed and inferred design were associated with an increase in crash frequency. Increases in the differences between inferred design speed and posted speed limit were also associated with an expected increase in crash frequency; however, increases in the operating speed variance and in the difference between operating speeds and posted speed limit were associated with an expected decrease in crash frequency.