Safety Evaluation of Truck-Related Crashes at Freeway Diverge Areas
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-2011
Keywords
Crash rates, Deceleration lanes, Diverging traffic, Freeways, Highway curves, Highway safety, Injury severity, Off ramps, Road shoulders, Single lane traffic, Speed limits, Traffic lanes, Trucks, Two lane highways
Abstract
The study evaluated the impacts of geometric design factors and traffic factors on the truck-related crashes at freeway diverge areas. For this purpose, 391 freeway segments with different geometric designs were selected in various locations throughout the State of Florida. Crash data and inventory data were collected from the selected freeway segments and organized into two sets: site-based and crash-based for developing two prediction models (truck-related crash frequency model and truck-related injury severity model) respectively. The truck-related crash frequency model, fitted by the Negative Binominal regression, is used to identify the significant factors contributing to truck-related crash frequency at freeway diverge areas, and quantify the impacts of the factors. And the injury severity model, developed by the Ordered Probit regression, is utilized to address the factors that contribute to the injury severity of truck-related crashes at freeway diverge areas and the factor impacts. The analysis of the two models show that exit configurations (Type I, II, III and IV) have no significant influence on the injury severity of truck-related crashes at diverge areas. Type III exit configuration has the best safety performance in terms of the lowest truck-related crash frequency at freeway diverge areas. For one-lane freeway exit ramp, replacing a Type I exit configuration with a Type II exit configuration will increase truck-related crash counts at freeway diverge area by 21%. For two-lane exit ramps, replacing a Type III configuration with a Type IV configuration will increase crash counts at freeway diverge area by 26%. Other significant factors on truck-related crashes at freeway diverge areas include deceleration lane length, number of through lanes/surface width, median/shoulder width, curvature and grade design, speed limit, AADT on mainline/ramp, and truck percentage.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Presented at the Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting in January 2011, in Washington, DC
Scholar Commons Citation
Wang, Zhenyu; Cao, Bin; Deng, Weiping; Zhang, Zhao; Lu, Jian J.; and Chen, Hongyun, "Safety Evaluation of Truck-Related Crashes at Freeway Diverge Areas" (2011). CUTR Faculty Journal Publications. 146.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cutr_facpub/146
