Data collected from the states of Minnesota and Washington on rural two-lane highways are used to build accident models for segments and three-legged and four-legged intersections stop-controlled on the minor legs. The quantity, quality, and variety of data collected, together with the advanced techniques applied in the analysis, make this study of special interest. Variables include traffic, horizontal and vertical alignments, lane and shoulder widths, roadside hazard rating, channelization, and number of driveways. Models are of negative binomial and extended negative binomial form and yield R2 values from 0.42 to 0.73 and overdispersion parameters from 0.20 to 0.51. A segment model combining both states and including state as a variable, and intersection models derived from Minnesota data, are featured, along with summary statistics, goodness-of-fit measures, and cross-validation between the states. Segment accidents depend significantly on most of the roadway variables collected, while intersection accidents depend primarily on traffic. The study recommends development of adjustment factors for different regions and times and further development of extended negative binomial models.
A national-level safety analysis tool is needed to complement existing analytical tools for assessment of the safety impacts of roadway design alternatives. FHWA has sponsored the development of the Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM), which is roadway design and redesign software that estimates the safety effects of alternative designs. Considering the importance of IHSDM in shaping the future of safety-related transportation investment decisions, FHWA justifiably sponsored research with the sole intent of independently validating some of the statistical models and algorithms in IHSDM. Statistical model validation aims to accomplish many important tasks, including (a) assessment of the logical defensibility of proposed models, (b) assessment of the transferability of models over future time periods and across different geographic locations, and (c) identification of areas in which future model improvements should be made. These three activities are reported for five proposed types of rural intersection crash prediction models. The internal validation of the model revealed that the crash models potentially suffer from omitted variables that affect safety, site selection and countermeasure selection bias, poorly measured and surrogate variables, and misspecification of model functional forms. The external validation indicated the inability of models to perform on par with model estimation performance. Recommendations for improving the state of the practice from this research include the systematic conduct of carefully designed before-and-after studies, improvements in data standardization and collection practices, and the development of analytical methods to combine the results of before-and-after studies with cross-sectional studies in a meaningful and useful way.
Although the concepts of the crossover displaced left-turn (XDL) intersection (also called the continuous flow intersection) were developed approximately four decades ago, there is no simplified procedure to evaluate its traffic performance and to compare this intersection with conventional intersections. Several studies have shown the qualitative and quantitative benefits of the XDL intersection without providing accessible tools for traffic engineers and planners to estimate average control delays and queues. Modeling was conducted on typical geometries over a wide distribution of traffic flow conditions for three different design configurations or cases using VISSIM simulations with pretimed signal settings. Some comparisons with similar conventional designs showed considerable savings in average control delay, as well as average queue length and increase in intersection capacity. The statistical models provided an accessible tool for the practitioner to assess average delay and average queue length for three types of XDL intersections. Finally, a preferred signal setting was developed for each of the five intersections of the XDL network.
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