Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of segment length, line types, and imputed retroreflectivity values on pavement-marking retroreflectivity and crash frequency analyses. Road data, crash data, pavement condition data, and pavement-marking retroreflectivity data from Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) databases were acquired and spatially integrated. Data sets for 1-, 3-, and 5-mi segments were prepared to investigate the effect of segmentation. Additional data sets with imputed and measured retroreflectivity data were prepared for comparison. A series of negative binomial regression analyses were run to estimate the expected number of crashes on varying segment lengths and data subsets based on the two retroreflectivity collection methods. The findings show that using smaller segments and data sets with measured retroreflectivity rather than imputed retroreflectivity leads to a more significant relationship between the retroreflectivity of longitudinal pavement markings and crash frequency. The findings also suggest that keeping longitudinal pavement markings in good condition has significant positive effects on safety. The results further suggested that the expected number of annual crashes significantly decreased with the increasing retroreflectivity of white-edge lines (WELs) and yellow-edge lines (YELs) for four-lane road segments. In addition, a significant relationship between pavement condition, measured with the International Roughness Index (IRI) and the expected number of crashes was found for all data sets.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Iowa DOT for providing the data for this research. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 8 • August 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 31, 2015
Accepted: Feb 10, 2016
Published online: Apr 11, 2016
Published in print: Aug 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Sep 11, 2016
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