Modeling the Probability of Freeway Rear-End Crash Occurrence
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 1
Abstract
A microscopic model of freeway rear-end crash risk is developed based on a modified negative binomial regression and estimated using Washington State data. Compared with most existing models, this model has two major advantages: (1) It directly considers a driver’s response time distribution; and (2) it applies a new dual-impact structure accounting for the probability of both a vehicle becoming an obstacle and the following vehicle’s reaction failure . The results show for example that truck percentage-mile-per-lane has a dual impact, it increases and decreases , yielding a net decrease in rear-end crash probabilities. Urban area, curvature, off-ramp and merge, shoulder width, and merge section are factors found to increase rear-end crash probabilities. Daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per lane has a dual impact; it decreases and increases , yielding a net increase, indicating for example that focusing VMT related safety improvement efforts on reducing drivers’ failure to avoid crashes, such as crash-avoidance systems, is of key importance. Understanding such dual impacts is important for selecting and evaluating safety improvement plans for freeways.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers thank the Washington State Department of Transportation and the Highway Safety Information System, Federal Highway Administration for their help in providing the data used in this study. The writers also thank the anonymous reviewers, whose constructive comments significantly improved the paper.
References
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). (2001). A policy on geometric design of highways and streets, Washington, D.C.
Bates, J. T. (1995). “Perception-reaction time.” ITE J., 65(2), 35–36.
Carson, J., and Mannering, F. (2001). “The effect of ice warning signs on ice-accident frequencies and severities.” Accid. Anal Prev., 33(1), 99–109.
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). (2003). Manual on uniform traffic control devices, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Dept. of Transportation.
Golob, T. F., and Reagan, A. C. (2004). “Traffic conditions and truck accidents on urban freeways.” UCI-ITS-WP-04-3, Univ. of California at Irvine, Irvine, Calif.
Golob, T. F., and Recker, W. W. (2003). “Relationships among urban freeway accidents, traffic flow, weather, and lighting conditions.” J. Transp. Eng., 129(4), 342–353.
Golob, T. F., Recker, W. W., and Alvarez, V. M. (2004). “Safety aspects of freeway weaving sections.” Transp. Res., Part A: Policy Pract., 38A, 35–51.
Greene, W. H. (2003). Econometric analysis, 5th Ed., Prentice Hall, New York.
Jason, B., Awed, W., Robles, J., Kononov, J., and Pinkerton, B. (1998). “Truck accidents at freeway ramps: Data analysis and high-risk site identification.” J. Transp. Stat., 1(1), 76–92.
Jovanis, P., and Chang, H. (1986). “Modeling the relationship of accidents to miles traveled.” Transportation Research Record. 1068, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 42–51.
Lee, J., and Mannering, F. (2002). “Impact of roadside features on the frequency and severity of run-off-roadway accidents: An empirical analysis.” Accid. Anal Prev., 34(2), 149–161.
Lerner, N. D. (1993). “Brake perception-reaction times of older and younger drivers.” Proc., Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual Meeting, HFES, Santa Monica, Calif., 206–210.
Lindley, J. (1987). “Urban freeway congestion: Quantification of the problem and effectiveness of potential solutions.” ITE J., 57(1), 27–32.
Mannering, F. L., Kilareski, W. P., and Washburn, S. S. (2005). Principles of highway engineering and traffic analysis, 3rd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Massie, D. L., Campbell, K. L., and Blower, D. F. (1993). “Development of a collision typology for evaluation of collision avoidance strategies.” Accid. Anal Prev., 25(3), 241–257.
Miaou, S. P. (1994). “The relationship between truck accidents and geometric design of road sections: Poisson versus negative binomial regressions.” Accid. Anal Prev., 26(4), 471–482.
Miaou, S. P., Hu, P., Wright, T., Rathi, A., and Davis, S. (1992). “Relationships between truck accidents and highway geometric design: A Poisson regression approach.” Transportation Research Record. 1376, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 10–18.
Milton, J., and Mannering, F. (1998). “The relationship among highway geometrics, traffic related elements and motor-vehicle accident frequencies.” Transportation, 25(4), 395–413.
Olson, P. L., and Sivak, M. (1986). “Perception-response time to unexpected roadway hazard.” Hum. Factors, 28(1), 91–96.
Plait, A. (1962). “The Weibull distribution.” Industrial Quality Control, 19(1), 17–26.
Poch, M., and Mannering, F. (1996). “Negative binomial analysis of intersection-accident frequencies.” J. Transp. Eng., 122(2), 105–113.
Schrank, D., and Lomax, T. (2003). The 2003 Urban Mobility Report, Texas Transportation Inst., The Texas A&M Univ. System, http://mobility.tamu.edu/ (Sep. 15, 2004).
Shankar, V., Mannering, F., and Barfield, W. (1995). “Effect of roadway geometrics and environmental factors on rural freeway accident frequencies.” Accid. Anal Prev., 27(3), 371–389.
Shankar, V., Milton, V., and Mannering, F. (1997). “Modeling accident frequencies as zero-altered probability process: An empirical inquiry.” Accid. Anal Prev., 29(6), 829–837.
Summala, H. (2000). “Brake reaction times and driver behavior analysis.” Transportation Human Factors, 2(3), 217–226.
Ulfarsson, G. F., and Shankar, V. (2003). “An accident count model based on multi-year cross-sectional roadway data with serial correlation.” Transportation Research Record. 1840, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 193–197.
Wang, Y. (1998). “Modeling vehicle-to-vehicle accident risks considering the occurrence mechanism at four-legged signalized intersections.” Ph.D. dissertation, The Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo.
Wang, Y., Ieda, H., and Mannering, F. (2003). “Estimating rear-end accident probability at signalized intersections: Occurrence-mechanism approach.” J. Transp. Eng., 129(4), 377–384.
Wang, Y., and Nihan, N. (2003). “Quantitative analysis on angle-accident risk at signalized intersections.” World Transport Research, Selected Proc., 9th World Conference on Transport Research, Pergamon, Seoul, Korea.
Washington State Dept. of Transportation (1996). 1996 Washington State highway accident report, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/mapsdata/tdo/ (Sep. 15, 2004).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 14, 2006
Accepted: May 16, 2006
Published online: Jan 1, 2007
Published in print: Jan 2007
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.