Title: | Safety Impacts of Highway Shoulder Attributes in Illinois |
Author(s): | Radhika Bamzai; Yongdoo Lee; Zongzhi Li |
Subject(s): | Highway, shoulder, paving, shoulder, safety, crash |
Abstract: | The single greatest category of highway vehicle crashes is run-off-the-road incidents. Significant material
differences and elevation changes in shoulder edges pose a potential safety hazard when a vehicle leaves the
travel way. Shoulder paving is recognized as a positive countermeasure to reduce a shoulder drop-off hazard.
This report documents an in-depth analysis of safety impacts of shoulder attributes using data on Illinois statemaintained
highways for period 2000-2006. Preliminary data analysis is first conducted to establish the
correlation between shoulder-related crashes by type and severity category and shoulder attributes such as
shoulder material type and outside paved shoulder width. Then, an analytical procedure is developed and
applied to the Illinois data for assessing safety impacts of shoulder paving and prioritizing highway segments
for shoulder paving using the Empirical Bayesian (EB) analysis and cross-sectional analysis approaches and
an optimization model. While this procedure does not eliminate the need for human judgment, it could help
experts make better decisions using optimization techniques. The findings are expected to help Illinois
Department of Transportation (DOT) update current design manuals. |
Issue Date: | 2011-04 |
Series/Report: | FHWA-ICT-11-078 |
Genre: | Technical Report |
Type: | Text |
Language: | English |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45840 |
ISSN: | 0197-9191 |
Publication Status: | published or submitted for publication |
Peer Reviewed: | not peer reviewed |
Sponsor: | Illinois Department of Transportation ICT R27-40 |
Rights Information: | No restrictions. This document is available to the public through the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia 22161 |
Date Available in IDEALS: | 2013-09-30 |