West Virginia has one of the oldest populations in the country. As the Appalachian Development Highway System expands, many older drivers are, for the first time in their driving experience, encountering at-grade intersections on high-speed divided roadways. Because older drivers generally demonstrate an increased accident involvement at at-grade intersections, a study was undertaken to assess understanding by West Virginia’s older drivers of the associated geometric design features and traffic control devices. A self-administered survey was completed by 172 participants at 15 senior centers in counties that have corridor highways within their boundaries. Respondents ranged in age from 50 to 91. Almost two-thirds of the respondents were female. About 44% of respondents indicated that they voluntarily limited their driving, mainly because of difficulties driving at night. Overall, crossing the divided highway was perceived as less difficult than making left turns. Making left turns onto the divided highway was perceived as the more difficult of the turning movements. Approximately one-half of the participants indicated that they did not have problems making left turns onto the divided highway. Large trucks and rudeness or dangerous actions of other drivers were the most commonly cited dislikes about sections of divided highway. Responses indicated a lack of understanding about how to drive through the middle of the at-grade intersection. This issue can be addressed through traffic engineering techniques such as delineation or channelization and through development of driver educational materials.
Highway structures are public works facilities that are inherently accessible, to a certain degree, to the general public at all hours of the day and every day of the year. As a result, some highway structures are susceptible to graffiti. Graffiti on highway structures is a significant problem throughout the United States. Not only is graffiti an eyesore to the traveling public, it presents a hazard to the perpetrator and a liability exposure for transportation agencies because highway structures span high elevations and are in close proximity to motor vehicle traffic. The most common methods for combating graffiti include washing the surface of the structure with high-pressure water sprays, repainting the surface, and sandblasting. Although each of these methods can, in most cases, effectively remove the graffiti, the solution is often temporary; more graffiti is likely to appear in the future at the same site. Further, these measures can be quite costly, especially if they have to be repeated on numerous occasions to remove recurring graffiti. Results of a comprehensive survey of transportation agencies are presented and analyzed. The survey was designed to assess the nature and extent of the graffiti problem as well as to identify some solutions to the problem and identify various preventive as well as removal techniques. The study focuses on current graffiti prevention and removal policies and various other graffiti-removal techniques that are undertaken by different state departments of transportation to mitigate graffiti problems in their states.
NCHRP Project 15-35, Geometric Design of Driveways, was initiated to help address the lack of comprehensive research and national design guidance for the design of driveway connections to roadways. The research initiated with this project included an extensive literature review, a survey of state agencies and contacts with interest groups, and fieldwork to measure traffic attributes. The project produced two publications: a research report on the NCHRP website and NCHRP Report 659: Guide for the Geometric Design of Driveways. This paper considers the following topics: (a) What design issues were identified? Current design practices may not adequately consider the range of all driveway users: bicyclists, motorists, and pedestrians. The paper discusses the vulnerability of various users on the basis of historical crash data. (b) What user attributes were found? The research produced information about the driveway grades at which the undersides of vehicles may drag and the speeds at which vehicles on urban arterials entered commercial driveways having radii ranging from 13 to 20 ft. (c) What design practices were recommended? The guide presents a number of design practices to better meet the needs of all users. This paper provides useful information for design consultants and local government professionals.
The roles of teams and technology transfer in enhancing safety on low-volume roads are addressed. Roadway safety is a multidisciplinary science involving several elements: ( a) the three components of the roadway system—people, vehicle, and roadway; ( b) the agencies and groups that plan, design, build, and use roads and promote roadway safety; and ( c) the public health and safety communities that are concerned with injury prevention, response, treatment, and rehabilitation. Often the people working within these separate elements are characterized by interests, methods, and means limited by the boundaries, real or perceived, of their disciplines, organizations, and cultures. The application of technology transfer and teamwork enhances the efficacy of efforts to focus these elements on issues and problems related to roadway safety. Three broad topics are discussed. First, the importance of integrating the efforts of technical and nontechnical people and organizations through the development and management of multidisciplinary working groups and teams is explained. An associated topic is the conflict and ambiguity expected with expertise roles, boundary roles, and culture. Second, the importance of technology transfer in establishing and maintaining roadway systems used by motor vehicles, nonmotorized vehicles, and pedestrians and in educating and training engineers, engineering technicians, and the general population to design, build, maintain, and use roads safely is highlighted. Third, the importance of existing agencies in providing an organizational infrastructure that may either facilitate or hinder roadway safety planning and operations is described.
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