Evaluation of the Use and Effectiveness of Wildlife Crossings

An empirical Bayes model to assess deer-vehicle crash safety in urban areas in Iowa

“…These projects rival many transportation projects in cost and can be perceived as a poor use of construction dollars. However, if these projects are planned well, the costs can be recovered with the benefits from crash reduction (Knapp et al 2004;Bissonette and Cramer 2008).…”

“…A study, funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, was conducted on the evaluation of wildlife crossings (Bissonette and Cramer 2008). A software tool was developed to help agencies select the best locations for wildlife crossings.…”

“…The NCHRP report (Bissonette and Cramer 2008) discusses various analysis techniques for crash and carcass data analysis. The objectives of this study were to examine the differences between using crash and carcass data for identifying high crash locations; and also, examine if the two data sets have different relationships with roadway cross section characteristics.…”

“…However, due to the number of zeros in the data, segments that were classified as similar through the GIMS data (created by Iowa DOT) were selected for the crash analysis. Crash and carcass data were combined to provide a better picture of the occurrence of crashes as it was called for in previous literature (Knapp et al 2007;Bissonette and Cramer 2008). In this process, 124 carcass and crash records were reconciled as double counts.…”

“…This is due to the amount of data being used (more weight is being placed on observed crash data) and the variability in the data (Hauer et al 2002). In past research (Bissonette and Cramer 2008), deviations were not considered in analysis. However, in that study, the researchers had similar results in identifying sections that would not have been indicated as high crash locations without EB analysis on the statewide basis.…”