United States Department of Transportation
i
Developing a smartphone based warning system application to enhance the safety at work zones : final report.
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2016-05-01
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[PDF-1.91 MB]
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TRIS Online Accession Number:1644732
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Abstract:Collisions in the work zone have always been a contributing factor to compromising safety on urban roadways. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the State Transportation Authorities have implemented many safety countermeasures to reduce forward collisions in work zones. However, due to the complexity of traffic in a work zone, traditional countermeasures often fail to prevent crashes. In this study, a smartphone-based warning system application was developed, which provides different types of warning messages, including sound, visual, and voice, to alert drivers for a hazardous traffic situation. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the warning system application in different part of a work zone was investigated by two driving simulator tests. The study of safety at work zones was divided into two phases, Phase A and Phase B. For each Phase, different twenty- four subjects were recruited to measure their driving behaviors that are affected by different types of smartphone- based warning messages, in terms of headway distance, headway time, speed, and acceleration/deceleration. Results show that voice messages works the most effective to instruct drivers to control their speed smoothly and keep sufficient headway time and braking distance, while driving through a work zone. These driving simulator-based studies found that the smartphone-based warning system is effective in reducing both vehicle-to-vehicle crashes and worker fatalities. It is recommended that such a low-cost and effective smartphone application should be tested in real road conditions with similar safety measures to those employed in this report.
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