Simulation-Based Assessment of Vehicle Safety Behavior under Hazardous Driving Conditions
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 4
Abstract
Future sustained economic growth of the nation very much depends on the reliability and efficiency of its highway infrastructure system. Some vehicles, such as trucks, emergency vehicles, and sport utility vehicles, often experience increasing risks of single-vehicle accidents under hazardous driving conditions, such as inclement weather and/or complicated topographical conditions. An advanced simulation-based single-vehicle accident assessment model is developed considering the coupling effects between vehicles and hazardous driving conditions, including wind gust, snow-covered or icy road surface, and/or curving. Compared to existing simulation models, the new model focuses on characterizing the transient process of accidents, introducing new critical variables on assessing the accident risks under more comprehensive hazardous driving conditions and establishing more realistic accident criteria. As a holistic deterministic model, it can be used to provide useful assessment and prevention information for traffic and emergency management. For example, it can be used to define appropriate safe driving speed limits for vulnerable vehicles under normal and extreme conditions and predict potential crash and injury risk of vulnerable drivers. Moreover, the new deterministic vehicle safety behavior simulation model lays a critical basis for future reliability-based studies of single-vehicle accident risks of vulnerable vehicles under hazardous conditions. After the model is introduced, numerical analyses on a typical truck under several representative hazardous scenarios will be conducted for demonstration purposes.
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Acknowledgments
This publication was partially supported by the Colorado Department of Transportation and the CDC NIOSH Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED1T42OH009229-01). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the writers and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDOT or CDC NIOSH and MAP ERC.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 4 • April 2010
Pages: 304 - 315
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 14, 2008
Accepted: Aug 13, 2009
Published online: Aug 15, 2009
Published in print: Apr 2010
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