Risk Analysis Techniques for Safety Evaluation of Highway Work Zones

2000 ◽  
Vol 1715 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Elias ◽  
Zohar J. Herbsman
Keyword(s):  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Safety Evaluation ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Work Zone ◽  
Work Zones ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
Work Zone Safety ◽  
Accident Data ◽  
Temporary Closure

Construction sites or work zones create serious disruptions in the normal flow of traffic, resulting in major inconveniences for the traveling public. Furthermore, these work zones create safety hazards that require special consideration. Current legislation and programs, at both state and national levels, emphasize the need for a better understanding of work zone problems to address work zone safety. This reality—coupled with the temporary closure of more miles of highway every year for rehabilitation and maintenance—makes the analysis of safety at construction sites a serious matter. A summary of a comprehensive study associated with the development of a new practical approach to address highway safety in construction zones is presented. Because empirical models require sample sizes that are not attainable due to the intrinsic scarcity of construction zone accident data, the problem was studied from the point of view of risk analysis. Monte Carlo simulations were used to develop risk factors. These factors are meant to be included in the calculations of additional user costs for work zones, or simply applied as risk measurements, to optimize the length and duration of closures for highway reconstruction and rehabilitation projects. In this way, it will be possible to assess the danger of work zones to the traveling public and minimize adverse effect of work zones on highway safety.

Investigation of Highway Work Zone Crashes: What We Know and What We Don't Know

1996 ◽  
Vol 1529 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Wang ◽  
Warren E. Hughes ◽  
Forrest M. Council ◽  
Jeffrey F. Paniati
Keyword(s):  
Information Needs ◽  
Safety Information ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
Work Zone ◽  
Federal Programs ◽  
Work Zones ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
Work Zone Safety ◽  
Relative Safety ◽  
Data Elements

Emphasis on work zone safety and improving the identification of work zone problems has been increased by recent legislation and federal programs. There is a critical need for better data related to highway work zone safety. Results are presented of an investigation to (a) determine what is known about the magnitude of highway work zone crashes, (b) examine characteristics of highway work zone crashes using the Highway Safety Information System, (c) investigate how work zone accidents are reported on police accident report forms and within state accident report systems, (d) identify critical voids in the knowledge of the relative safety of work zones, and (e) examine possible ways to address unfulfilled information needs related to work zone safety. Deficiencies of data reporting practices and issues of data needs pertaining to work zone safety are discussed. Recommendations to improve data collection and fulfill information needs are presented, including suggested data elements to be added to police accident report forms.

scholarly journals Risk Factors in Work Zone Safety Events: A Naturalistic Driving Study Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (1) ◽  
pp. 379-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nipjyoti Bharadwaj ◽  
Praveen Edara ◽  
Carlos Sun
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Driver Behavior ◽  
Work Zone ◽  
Crash Risk ◽  
Work Zones ◽  
Binary Logistic Regression Model ◽  
Work Zone Safety ◽  
Naturalistic Driving Study ◽  
Naturalistic Driving ◽  
The Impact

Identification of crash risk factors and enhancing safety at work zones is a major priority for transportation agencies. There is a critical need for collecting comprehensive data related to work zone safety. The naturalistic driving study (NDS) data offers a rare opportunity for a first-hand view of crashes and near-crashes (CNC) that occur in and around work zones. NDS includes information related to driver behavior and various non-driving related tasks performed while driving. Thus, the impact of driver behavior on crash risk along with infrastructure and traffic variables can be assessed. This study: (1) investigated risk factors associated with safety critical events occurring in a work zone; (2) developed a binary logistic regression model to estimate crash risk in work zones; and (3) quantified risk for different factors using matched case-control design and odds ratios (OR). The predictive ability of the model was evaluated by developing receiver operating characteristic curves for training and validation datasets. The results indicate that performing a non-driving related secondary task for more than 6 seconds increases the CNC risk by 5.46 times. Driver inattention was found to be the most critical behavioral factor contributing to CNC risk with an odds ratio of 29.06. In addition, traffic conditions corresponding to Level of Service (LOS) D exhibited the highest level of CNC risk in work zones. This study represents one of the first efforts to closely examine work zone events in the Transportation Research Board’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) NDS data to better understand factors contributing to increased crash risk in work zones.

Robotic Highway Safety Markers

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane M. Farritor ◽  
Mark E. Rentschler
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Control ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
Work Zone ◽  
Control Architecture ◽  
Replacement Cost ◽  
Marker System ◽  
Safety Devices ◽  
Work Zone Safety ◽  
Control Devices ◽  
Traffic Control Devices

Proper traffic control is critical in highway work zone safety. Traffic control devices such as signs, barricades, cones, and plastic safety barrels are often used. Accidents can occur because of improper work zone design, improper work zone housekeeping, and driver negligence. One solution is to automate safety devices. This paper presents a mobile safety barrel robot. The Robotic Safety Barrels are the first elements of a team of Robotic Safety Markers (RSM) that includes signs, cones, and possibly barricades and arrestors. To be practical the system must be reliable and have a low per robot cost. A robot that malfunctions could enter traffic and create a significant hazard. Also, multiple safety markers are used and barrels are often struck by vehicles. Safety markers with a high replacement cost are not practical. This paper describes the motivation for the robotic safety marker system and how it could improve work zone safety. The design of three robot prototypes is presented. A control architecture is discussed that has been implemented in simulation and partially tested on the prototype robots.

scholarly journals Development of a Safety Evaluation Model for Provincial Highway

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Yuan ◽  
He-wei Yuan ◽  
Yong-feng Ma ◽  
Ying-wei Ren
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation Model ◽  
Safety Evaluation ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
Safety Performance ◽  
Highway Traffic ◽  
Traffic Crash ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
Evaluation Approach ◽  
Traffic Conflict ◽  
Accident Data

Provincial highway safety is one of the most important issues in transportation. To evaluate or assess the safety performance of provincial highway, traffic crash analysis or traffic conflict analysis has been used for a long history. However, it is very difficult and time-consuming to obtain historical crash data or traffic conflict data. This study analyzes the provincial highways' accident data during 2006–2010, and the characteristics of provincial highway have been investigated; in addition the influencing elements are identified. A comprehensive approach is introduced to evaluate provincial highway safety performance and corresponding models are developed considering the accidents, geometrics, facilities, and traffic environment. The approach will also result in a safety index to indicate the safety performance level of the provincial highway. In this paper, the approach (called safety evaluation approach) is practically applied to evaluate the safety performance of some provincial highways in Hebei Province. Results from the real application indicate that the approach has good applicability and can be used by field safety engineers.

scholarly journals Cooperative Highway Work Zone Merge Control Based on Reinforcement Learning in a Connected and Automated Environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 2674 (10) ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Tianzhu Ren ◽  
Yuanchang Xie ◽  
Liming Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Work Zone ◽  
Control Individual ◽  
Cruise Control ◽  
Work Zones ◽  
Cooperative Driving ◽  
Work Zone Safety ◽  
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control ◽  
Aging Infrastructure ◽  
Longitudinal Position

Given the aging infrastructure and the anticipated growing number of highway work zones in the U.S.A., it is important to investigate work zone merge control, which is critical for improving work zone safety and capacity. This paper proposes and evaluates a novel highway work zone merge control strategy based on cooperative driving behavior enabled by artificial intelligence. The proposed method assumes that all vehicles are fully automated, connected, and cooperative. It inserts two metering zones in the open lane to make space for merging vehicles in the closed lane. In addition, each vehicle in the closed lane learns how to adjust its longitudinal position optimally to find a safe gap in the open lane using an off-policy soft actor critic reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, considering its surrounding traffic conditions. The learning results are captured in convolutional neural networks and used to control individual vehicles in the testing phase. By adding the metering zones and taking the locations, speeds, and accelerations of surrounding vehicles into account, cooperation among vehicles is implicitly considered. This RL-based model is trained and evaluated using a microscopic traffic simulator. The results show that this cooperative RL-based merge control significantly outperforms popular strategies such as late merge and early merge in terms of both mobility and safety measures. It also performs better than a strategy assuming all vehicles are equipped with cooperative adaptive cruise control.

Risk Analysis for Dam Safety Evaluation: Hydrologic Risk.

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jery Stedinger ◽  
David C. Heath ◽  
Kay Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Safety Evaluation ◽  
Dam Safety

Streamlining Chinese Highway Accident Data Acquisition, Communications, and Analysis

2003 ◽  
Vol 1846 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Yi ◽  
Bin Ran
Keyword(s):  
Data Acquisition ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
Data Mapping ◽  
Data Logger ◽  
Safety Program ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
Accident Data ◽  
Analysis System ◽  
Set Up

This research examines a streamlined accident data acquisition, communications, and analysis system to improve the Chinese highway safety program. A data logger compatible with the Global Positioning System and geographic information system is proposed to identify highway accident locations and organize the data into a database format. A data encoding concept is used to transform Chinese characters into numbers, so that the encoded data are easy to integrate into a large data system. A three-tier client–server networking system is set up as the backbone framework for data communications between the central database and distributed local offices. Using local database functions, traffic police at the client level can view crash data through data mapping and attribute listing and analyze the data through nested query and sorting operations. A data graphing and analysis module was tested for automatically constructing a collision diagram on selected data. The proposed approach to crash data acquisition and analysis was found to be feasible and effective and will help to enhance China’s highway safety program after full implementation.

Tools to Identify Safety Issues for a Corridor Safety-Improvement Program

2000 ◽  
Vol 1717 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome P. Breyer
Keyword(s):  
Relational Databases ◽  
Safety Evaluation ◽  
Highway Safety ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Safety Hazards ◽  
Improvement Program ◽  
Satellite Systems ◽  
Safety Issues ◽  
Advanced Technologies ◽  
Safety Improvement

The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) recognizes that a new paradigm in highway safety evaluation was brought about by the advent of advanced technologies such as photo log, geographic information systems (GIS), and global-positioning satellite systems. Whereas these technologies are known to serve distinct singular purposes in a highway agency, ADOT has endeavored to explore the possibilities of integrating these technologies for the purpose of providing an all-encompassing perspective of crash history and roadside characteristics in a multimedia display of GIS maps and related photo imagery. The research provides the account of an analytic tool-development process aimed at improving the recognition of highway safety hazards. These hazards might otherwise be apparent if not for the relative complexity of existing relational databases and spatial GIS infrastructure at ADOT. Previous methods of mining data from the ADOT crash databases were limited in functionality as well as in reliability. By promoting the “visualization” of highway safety conditions, the advanced technologies open a wealth of new opportunities in identifying problematic roadside conditions and crash histories. This is expected to lead to an improved economy of implementing safety improvements that are designed properly to mitigate the “real” conditions that can be identified. The research is a companion to the larger, FHWA-sponsored research into establishing a corridor safety-improvement program for Arizona (FHWA Report FHWA-AZ 98-458).

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