Secondary Accident Rates on Los Angeles Freeways
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 130, Issue 3
Abstract
There is a prevailing assumption that Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) programs improve safety for unassisted motorists by reducing the likelihood of secondary accidents. This research identifies 84,684 accident records from the California Highway Patrol’s First Incident Response Services Tracking system, and subjects these data records to a sequence of filters that check for incrementally more stringent conditions consistent with secondary accidents. This paper shows that secondary accidents on Los Angeles freeways are much less frequent than suggested in the transportation engineering literature. Avoiding secondary accidents provides only a small incentive to deploy FSPs, but the expected benefits associated with reducing already low secondary accident rates may still be sufficient to justify accounting for these costs.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Al-Deek, H., Garib, A., and Radwan, A. E. (1995). “New method for estimating freeway incident congestion.” Transportation Research Record 1494, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
Karlaftis, M. G., Richards, N. P., Latoski, S. P., and Sinha, K. C. (1998). “An empirical analysis of secondary crash causes.” Proc., 77th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., Paper 980017.
Koening, B., Yee, C., Guensler, R., and Jovanis, P. (1994). “Incidents, lane closures, and rapid incident response: Congestion and emissions analysis.” UCD-ITS-RR-94-2, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis.
Latoski, S. P., Pal, R., and Sinha, K. C.(1999). “Cost-effectiveness evaluation of Hoosier Helper freeway service patrol.” J. Transp. Eng., 125(5), 429–438.
Lindley, J. A. (1986). “Qualification of urban freeway congestion and analysis of remedial measures.” FHwA Rep. No. RD87-052, Washington, D.C.
Raub, R. A. (1997a). “Occurrence of secondary crashes of urban arterial roadways.” Transportation Research Record 1581: Safety and human performance—Traffic records, accident prediction and analysis, and statistical methods, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
Raub, R. A.(1997b). “Secondary crashes: An important component of roadway incident management.” Transp. Q., 51(3), 93–104.
Skabardonis, A. (2000). “Freeway service patrol (FSP) research support phase I: FSP beat evaluation routine.” Technical Report, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
Skabardonis, A., Noeimi, H., Petty, K., Rydzewski, D., Varaiya, P., and Al-Deek, H. (1995). “Freeway service patrol evaluation.” UCB-ITS-PRR-95-5, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Skabardonis, A., Petty, K., Bertini, R., and Varaiya, P. (1998). “Evaluation of the freeway service patrol in Los Angeles.” California PATH Research Rep. UCB-ITS-PRR-98-31, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 130 • Issue 3 • May 2004
Pages: 280 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 3, 2001
Accepted: May 20, 2003
Published online: Apr 15, 2004
Published in print: May 2004
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.