Incorporating Road Safety into Pavement Management

Abstract

Improving road safety through proper pavement engineering and maintenance should be one of the major objectives of pavement management systems. When pavements are evaluated in terms of safety, a number of factors related to pavement engineering properties are raised, such as pavement geometric design, paving materials and mix design, pavement surface properties, shoulder type, and pavement color and visibility. Each year there are voluminous annual reports on traffic accident statistics and discussions of such road safety issues as road safety modeling and pavement safety measurements and criteria. Although road safety may be considered a separate area, it should be incorporated into pavement management systems. The main pavement engineering relationships associated with road safety are identified, and the various aspects of road safety related to pavement management, such as pavement types, pavement surface macrotexture and microtexture, and pavement safety measurements, criteria, and evaluation methods, are discussed. A systematic approach is proposed for the coordination of pavement maintenance programs with road safety improvement and the incorporation or integration of safety management with pavement and other management systems. Finally, a list of possible remedial measures for road safety improvements associated with pavement maintenance activities is recommended.

Roadway Pavement Preservation 2005

“…While pavement condition indicators such as pavement distress, roughness, and rutting have been used to report pavement conditions by many agencies, a PMS can provide the information to establish agency guidelines for setting intervention levels that might help to reduce crashes related to surface texture or friction factors. To date, there has been little work done to incorporate road safety management with pavement management and PM programs (Tighe et al 2000). However, relationships between road crash occurrences and pavement conditions can likely be made and pavement preservation activities can play a role in reducing the frequency of crash occurrences.…”

“…Using this information, an agency can develop guidelines for determining intervention levels for the use of PM treatments impacting friction, such as microsurfacing, grinding and/or grooving, or chip sealing. One approach is to use a chart similar to the one presented in Figure 3 (Tighe et al 2000). In this example, the chart is broken into four quadrants.…”

“…The IFI consists of two parameters: the friction number at a slip speed of 60 km/h (37 mph) (F60), which is controlled by the microtexture, and the slip speed number (S p ), which is controlled by macrotexture (Henry 1996). Further studies have been conducted to correlate macrotexture measures and speed, resulting in a linear regression model that predicts the slip speed number from the mean value of macrotexture depth (or the average distance between the surface of the a pavement and the tire-road interface within a certain surface area) (Tighe et al 2000). As discussed later in the paper, the parameters used to calculate the IFI can be used by pavement management engineers to identify treatment needs and safety intervention levels as part of the agency's normal pavement planning and programming activities.…”

“…To adequately address the attributes that influence the relationship between pavement surface characteristics and safety, several indicators should be considered. For instance, surface texture or friction indicators include macrotexture and microtexture characteristics [such as the International Friction Index (IFI)] and skid resistance or skid number (SN) measures (Tighe et al 2000). Other, more common characteristics, such as pavement roughness [such as the International Roughness Index (IRI)] and pavement surface distress (such as cracking, rutting, and potholes), are regularly incorporated into the network-level data collection activities normally incorporated into an agency's pavement management practices.…”

Distress Identification, Cost Analysis and Pavement Temperature Prediction for the Long-Term Pavement Performance for Western Australia

“…Improving road safety through proper pavement engineering and maintenance should be one of the major objective of pavement management systems [33]. When pavement are evaluated in terms of safety, a number of factor related to pavement engineering properties are raised, such as pavement geometric design, pavement materials and mix design, pavement surface properties, shoulders type and pavement color and visibility [33]. A good pavement engineering management system requires an accurate and efficient pavement performance [34] so that prediction models based on the Pavement Condition Index and the age of the pavement can be developed.…”