scholarly journals Impact of a Lower Conservation Budget on Road Safety Indices

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rojo ◽  
H. Gonzalo-Orden ◽  
A. Linares ◽  
L. dell’Olio

Over the past few years, several countries, including Spain, have been experiencing a period of economic recession. As a result, these governments have reduced their budgets for transport infrastructures (both construction and maintenance operations). The main objective of this study is to analyze whether these budget reductions have an effect on increased accident rates and to perform an assessment of their real economic benefit. Thus, we analyze whether significant changes over recent years are perceptible in the road safety indexes in Spain, in terms of risk, accident fatality, and accident severity. The relation between lower budgets and higher road safety indices is analyzed through linear regression techniques. The results show a strong relation between the Risk Index and the maintenance budget, measured as an average of the last years. In addition, a final economic assessment demonstrates that this reduction in investment had no real economic benefits, especially as the costs of the accidents exceeded the savings in the conservation plans.

Author(s):  
MARTA ROJO ◽  
HERNÁN GONZALO-ORDEN ◽  
ALAITZ LINARES ◽  
LUIGI DELL'OLIO

During the last years, the investment in both construction and conservation of transportinfrastructures has been considerably reduced in several countries, as Spain. After anumber of years in which economic circumstances have forced Governments to reducebudgets earmarked for the maintenance and creation of new ways, it is interesting toanalyze whether this has taken a toll on accident rates.The paper evaluates if there are significant changes in the road safety through these yearsin Spain, comparing the annual statistics concerning investment in infrastructure andaccidents. Thus, the classical risk, mortality and severity indexes have been analyzed tounderstand their real trends. Finally, through linear regression techniques, it is shown howthese trends are related to the budgets invested each year, in order to draw interestingconclusions about the effect of their reduction.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3427


Safety ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasquale Colonna ◽  
Paolo Intini ◽  
Nicola Berloco ◽  
Veronica Fedele ◽  
Giuseppe Masi ◽  
...  

The need for improving urban road safety, livability, and sustainability is evident. Quantitative estimates and qualitative methods/strategies can be used by road safety practitioners to design safety interventions. This study proposes a flexible integrated design framework for safety interventions on existing urban road segments and intersections that integrates quantitative and qualitative methods. The proposed design framework is divided into four stages of the safety management process: End of Network Screening, Diagnosis, Selection of Countermeasures, and Economic Assessment. Pilot applications of the proposed method were performed on existing roads of the urban road network of the Municipality of Bari, Italy. Results from the application were useful to highlight some possible problems in the different stages of the design process. In particular, the discussed problems include a lack of crash and traffic data, difficulties with defining the road functional classifications, including rural-to-urban transitions, a lack of local inspection procedures, the recurrent problems from diagnosis, difficulties regarding the safety assessment of cycling infrastructures and sight distances, the criteria for grouping countermeasures into sets, and the choice of appropriate predictive methods. In response, appropriate solutions to the highlighted problems were presented. The usefulness of the proposed method for both practitioners and researchers was shown.


Author(s):  
Paul de Leur ◽  
Tarek Sayed

The cornerstone of most safety management programs consists of a “collision-prone location” program, where significant collision history must exist and be identified before improvements are recommended. Often, these programs are solely dependent on collision records and thus program success is governed by the data quality. Unfortunately, in many jurisdictions in North America, the quantity and quality of collision data have been degrading for several years. This growing problem is jeopardizing the success and continuance of many road safety programs. To help mitigate this problem, it is believed that a subjective evaluation technique could be developed that does not rely on collision statistics and that could be used to identify and diagnose problematic areas. The development and application of a risk index used for road safety evaluation are described. The risk index is developed as a driver-based, subjective assessment of the potential road safety risks for in-service roadways. The objective of developing the safety risk index is to produce a technique to support road safety analysis that does not rely on deteriorating collision data. The road safety risk index was developed and tested to ensure consistency between observers in their subjective assessment of safety. In addition, the results from the risk index were compared with results from objectively derived road safety measures to evaluate the success of the road safety risk index. The comparison indicates that there is a statistically significant agreement between the results of the risk index and the objectively derived road safety measures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5899
Author(s):  
Yeonsoo Jun ◽  
Juneyoung Park ◽  
Chunho Yeom

This paper evaluates experimental variables for virtual road safety audits (VRSAs) through practical experiments to promote sustainable road safety. VRSAs perform road safety audits using driving simulators (DSs), and all objects in the road environment cannot be experimental variables because of realistic constraints. Therefore, the study evaluates the likelihood of recommendation of VRSA experimental variables by comparing DSs experiments and field reviews to secure sustainable road safety conditions. The net promoter score results evaluated “Tunnel”, “Bridge”, “Underpass”, “Footbridge”, “Traffic island”, “Sign”, “Lane”, “Road marking”, “Traffic light”, “Median barrier”, “Road furniture”, and “Traffic condition” as recommended variables. On the contrary, the “Road pavement”, “Drainage”, “Lighting”, “Vehicle”, “Pedestrian”, “Bicycle”, “Accident”, and “Hazard event” variables were not recommended. The study can be used for decision making in VRSA scenario development as an initial effort to evaluate its experimental variables.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2039
Author(s):  
Juan F. Dols ◽  
Jaime Molina ◽  
F. Javier Camacho-Torregrosa ◽  
David Llopis-Castelló ◽  
Alfredo García

The analysis of road safety is critical in road design. Complying to guidelines is not enough to ensure the highest safety levels, so many of them encourage designers to virtually recreate and test their roads, benefitting from the evolution of driving simulators in recent years. However, an accurate recreation of the road and its environment represents a real bottleneck in the process. A very important limitation lies in the diversity of input data, from different sources and requiring specific adaptations for every single simulator. This paper aims at showing a framework for recreating faster virtual scenarios by using an Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)-based file. This methodology was compared to two other conventional methods for developing driving scenarios. The main outcome of this study has demonstrated that with a data exchange file in IFC format, virtual scenarios can be faster designed to carry out safety audits with driving simulators. As a result, the editing, programming, and processing times were substantially reduced using the proposed IFC exchange file format through a BIM (Building Information Modeling) model. This methodology facilitates cost-savings, execution, and optimization resources in road safety analysis.


Author(s):  
Puspa Raj Pant ◽  
Sudhamshu Dahal ◽  
Kannan Krishnaswamy ◽  
Sunil Kumar Joshi ◽  
Julie Mytton
Keyword(s):  

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 3661
Author(s):  
Noman Khan ◽  
Khan Muhammad ◽  
Tanveer Hussain ◽  
Mansoor Nasir ◽  
Muhammad Munsif ◽  
...  

Virtual reality (VR) has been widely used as a tool to assist people by letting them learn and simulate situations that are too dangerous and risky to practice in real life, and one of these is road safety training for children. Traditional video- and presentation-based road safety training has average output results as it lacks physical practice and the involvement of children during training, without any practical testing examination to check the learned abilities of a child before their exposure to real-world environments. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a 3D realistic open-ended VR and Kinect sensor-based training setup using the Unity game engine, wherein children are educated and involved in road safety exercises. The proposed system applies the concepts of VR in a game-like setting to let the children learn about traffic rules and practice them in their homes without any risk of being exposed to the outside environment. Thus, with our interactive and immersive training environment, we aim to minimize road accidents involving children and contribute to the generic domain of healthcare. Furthermore, the proposed framework evaluates the overall performance of the students in a virtual environment (VE) to develop their road-awareness skills. To ensure safety, the proposed system has an extra examination layer for children’s abilities evaluation, whereby a child is considered fit for real-world practice in cases where they fulfil certain criteria by achieving set scores. To show the robustness and stability of the proposed system, we conduct four types of subjective activities by involving a group of ten students with average grades in their classes. The experimental results show the positive effect of the proposed system in improving the road crossing behavior of the children.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Marchetti ◽  
M. Moutton ◽  
S. Ludwig ◽  
L. Ibos ◽  
V. Feuillet ◽  
...  

Thermal mapping has been implemented since the late eighties to establish the susceptibility of road networks to ice occurrence with measurements from a radiometer and some atmospheric parameters. They are usually done before dawn during wintertime when the road energy is dissipated. The objective of this study was to establish if an infrared camera could improve the determination of ice road susceptibility, to build a new winter risk index, to improve the measurements rate, and to analyze its consistency with seasons and infrastructures environment. Data analysis obtained from the conventional approved radiometer sensing technique and the infrared camera has shown great similarities. A comparison was made with promising perspectives. The measurement rate to analyse a given road network could be increased by a factor two.


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