Safety Performance Function Development for Analysis of Bridges
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 8
Abstract
Bridges are an integral infrastructure component and, as such, have been the subject of extensive research efforts related to structural performance. However, there has been little study on the traffic safety performance of bridges, which have very different physical and operational characteristics compared with regular roadway facilities. This study develops safety performance functions (SPFs) for overall vehicle crashes and single-vehicle crashes occurring on major highway bridges in Alabama. The bridge characteristic data and crash information are obtained from three different databases. Geographic information systems (GIS) are used to spatially represent bridges as vectors and associate crashes to the bridges based on location attributes from the crash data. SPFs of several functional forms are developed and investigated for identifying the best model using negative binomial regression. The models are validated by comparing their relative predictive capabilities. This paper recommends models that fit the Alabama data well. These models can be used for estimating the expected number of crashes on bridges along major highways in Alabama.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Alabama Department of Transportation for authorizing and funding the Bridge Rail Safety Analysis project. The authors would also like to thank the Center for Advanced Public Safety at the University of Alabama for assistance in working with the Alabama crash data.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 8 • August 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 12, 2014
Accepted: Feb 20, 2015
Published online: Apr 7, 2015
Published in print: Aug 1, 2015
Discussion open until: Sep 7, 2015
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