Appraisal of the Interactive Highway Safety Design Model’s Crash Prediction and Design Consistency Modules: Case Studies from Pennsylvania
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 2
Abstract
The interactive highway safety design model (IHSDM) is a suite of software analysis tools used to evaluate safety and operational effects of geometric design on two-lane rural highways. IHSDM checks existing or proposed two-lane highway designs against relevant design policy values and provides estimates of a design’s expected safety and operational performance. This paper describes efforts to apply IHSDM to two existing rural roadways (one an arterial and the other a collector) in Pennsylvania and to compare the crash prediction and speed profile results to observed speed and crash data for these same two roadway segments. When considering both case study roadways together, the use of site-specific crash history data, adjusted using the empirical Bayes procedure, and a county-level calibration factor, produced crash frequency predictions that most closely matched the observed crash frequencies. The design consistency module output on the arterial roadway closely matched the observed speeds. On the collector roadway, the predicted and observed speeds did not match closely, thus, underscoring the need to expand the design consistency module capabilities to consider low-speed, complex alignments.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Pennsylvania State University. The writers would like to thank Kenneth Opiela from FHWA for his guidance relative to the study and acquisition of roadway data from the digital highway measurement van. John Molino from Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) designed the nighttime driving experiment and collected the data used for the Route A evaluation. The writers would also express their appreciation to Brian St. John of McCormick-Taylor for providing both speed and as-built construction plans used in the Route B evaluation. Additionally, James Roman from PennDOT provided speed data used in the Route B analysis. Last, the writers thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments significantly enhanced the quality of this case study paper.
References
Donnell, E. T., Gemar, M. D., and Cruzado, I. (2006). “Operational effects of wide edge lines applied to horizontal curves on two-lane rural highways.” Rep. No. PTI 2007-04, Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, University Park, Pa.
Fitzpatrick, K., et al. (2000). “Speed prediction for two-lane rural highways.” Rep. No. FHWA-RD-99-171, Federal Highway Administration, McLean, Va.
Guzman, J. (1996). “Comparison of day and night vehicular speeds on horizontal curves on rural two-lane highways.” Rep. No. 04690-5, Texas Transportation Institute, College Station, Tex.
Harwood, D. W., Council, F. M., Hauer, E., Hughes, W. E., and Vogt, A. (2000). “Prediction of the expected safety performance of rural two-lane rural highways.” Rep. No. FHWA-RD-99-207, Federal Highway Administration, McLean, Va.
Krammes, R. A., and Hayden, C. (2003). “Making two-lane roads safer.” Public Roads, 66(4), 16–21.
Mills, P., and Oskard, M. (2004). “FHWA develops an all-in-one highway measurement vehicle.” Research and technology transporter, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.
Molino, J. A., Katz, B. J., Donnell, E. T., Moyer, M. J., and Opiela, K. S. (2006). “Field ratings of nighttime delineation enhancements for curves.” Proc., 85th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (CD-ROM), Paper No. 06-2698.
Schneider, W., and Fitzpatrick, K. (2006). “The development and evaluation of calibration factors for the rural two-lane highway draft prototype chapter.” Proc. 85th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (CD-ROM), Paper No. 06-1100.
Sun, X., Li, Y., Magri, D., and Shirazi, H. H. (2006). “Application of highway safety manual draft chapter: Louisiana experience.” Proc., 85th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (CD-ROM), Paper No. 06-1682.
Vogt, A., and Bared, J. (1998). “Accident models for two-lane rural roads: Segments and intersections.” Rep. No. FHWA-RD-98-133, Federal Highway Administration, McLean Va.
Zegeer, C. V., Reinfurt, D. W., Hummer, J., Herf, L., and Hunter, W. (1988). “Safety effects of cross-section design for two-lane roads.” Transportation Research Record. 1195, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 20–32.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 2 • February 2009
Pages: 62 - 73
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 15, 2007
Accepted: Aug 20, 2008
Published online: Feb 1, 2009
Published in print: Feb 2009
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.