NTL Record

Title Development of Relationship Between Truck Accidents and Geometric Design: Phase I
Record ID 79264
Personal Name
Creator
Miaou, Shaw-Pin; Hu, Patricia S.; Wright, Tommy; Davis, Stacy C.; Rathi, Ajay K.
Personal Name
Contributor
Lum, Harry
Corporate Creator Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Center for Transportation Analysis
Corporate
Contributor
United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety and Traffic Operations R&D
Publisher United States. Federal Highway Administration
Publication Date 19930801
Language English
Abstract The purpose of this study was to establish empirical relationships between truck accidents and highway geometric design. First, statistical frameworks based on Poisson and negative binomial regression models were proposed. Preliminary models were then developed using accidents and road inventory data from the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS). Three roadway classes were considered in the model development: rural Interstate, urban Interstate and freeway, and rural two-lane undivided arterial. The maximum likelihood method was used for estimation of model parameters. Information criterion, asymptotic t-statistic, and goodness-of-fit test statistics were employed to evaluate the estimated models. The model results based on data from one of the HSIS States - Utah, were used for analysis and for suggesting areas in which the quality and quantity of the existing HSIS data can be enhanced to improve the developed models. Despite the limitations in existing Utah data, some encouraging preliminary relationships were developed for horizontal curvature, length of curve, vertical grade, length of grade, shoulder width, number of lanes, and annual average daily traffic (AADT) per lane (a surrogate measure for vehicle flow density). Goodness-of-fit test statistics indicated that extra variations (or overdispersion) existed in the data over the developed Poisson models for all three roadway classes. Subsequent analyses suggested that a future study can be performed to enhance the predictive power of these preliminary models by including detailed truck exposure information, e.g. time-of-day, truck type, and weather conditions, by considering more explanatory variables, such as roadside design and superelevation, and by reducing the sampling errors of vehicle exposure data (both AADT and truck percentages).
Rosap ID dot:54172
Rosap URL https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/54172
TRT Terms Highway safety; Truck crashes; Geometric design; Binomial distributions; Poisson distributions; Traffic data
Geographical
Coverage
United States
TRIS Online
Accession No
634391
Contract Number DTFH61-90-Y-00036
Report Number FHWA-RD-91-124
Resource type Tech Report
URL https://ntlrepository.blob.core.windows.net/lib/79000/79200/79264/008311.pdf
Format PDF
Database NTL Digital Repository