United States Department of Transportation
i
Developing safety risk index for truck preferred arterial corridor.
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2013-06-01
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[PDF-1.93 MB]
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Abstract:Truck safety has been of great interest to transportation officials, engineers and researchers for many years because
of the amount of freight transported by trucks, the safety impact of trucks in traffic, and trucks’ invaluable
contribution to the country’s economic growth. Connecting between traffic generators, arterial streets are key links
for door-to-door deliveries. It is imperative to study and evaluate truck safety impact on arterial streets in response
to the continued strong growth of truck traffic. This project provided a comprehensive analysis of truck-related
crashes that occurred on arterial streets.
By collecting extensive roadway geometries, pavement conditions, traffic data on selected arterial corridors heavily
traveled by trucks, truck crash frequency and injury severity contributing factors have been identified. Statistical
models have been tested with different combinations of datasets, with and without access parameters. Without the
access related variables, truck miles traveled, annual average daily traffic (AADT), signal density, shoulder width,
pavement service index (PSI) and its standard deviation are statistically significant factors for predicting the crash
frequency. After incorporating access information, commercial driveway design related variables exhibit statistical
significance while the previously significant variables such as AADT, PSI and its standard deviation are no longer
statistically significant. This noticeable change of the statistical models warns that a spurious relationship may be
formed if a causal relationship cannot be sufficiently supported via the data collected. For crash severity prediction,
twelve contributing factors such as posted speed limit, lane width, number of lanes, pavement condition index, and
undivided roadway portion were identified. Subsequently, the corridors safety performance measured by a truck
crash severity index (CSI) as a function of crash frequency and injury severity has been established. It is
anticipated that the findings in the study will not only benefit state and local agencies in planning, designing, and
managing a safe arterial corridor for trucks and other motorists, but also help motor carriers to optimize their routes
from a safety perspective.
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