Understanding Attention Management and Driver Decision Behavior at Short-Storage Rail Grade Crossings

Details

• Creators:
  Veinott, Elizabeth ; Linja, Anne ; Lautala, Pasi
• Corporate Creators:
  Michigan Technological University. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering ; Michigan Technological University, Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences
• Corporate Contributors:
  National University Rail Center (NURail) ; United States. Department of Transportation. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology ; United States. Department of Transportation. University Transportation Centers (UTC) Program
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Attention Behavior Crash Data Data Analysis Decision Making Drivers Highway Safety Intersections Laboratory Studies Railroad Grade Crossings Railroad Safety

  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  NURail2019-MTU-R17
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  National University Rail Center (NURail)
• Abstract:
  The goal of this project was to focus on understanding driver attention and decision-making behavior at short-storage highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) compared to non-short storage HRGCs. While rail safety has improved from the mid-1990s to 2010 (Yeh & Multer, 2008), the decreasing trend has flattened over the last 10 years (Tey, et al., 2013). Locations with nearby highway intersections (short-storage) have proven to be challenging for safe traversal. Since majority of HRGC crashes are caused by human behavior, the authors believe research on short-storage may provide new insights to understand driver challenges in those locations. There is limited past research at short storage or limited space crossings, especially on driver behavior aspects. Short-storage HRGCs are those crossings with a highway or intersection that is close to a rail track, such that there is limited space for vehicles to stop after the track. The size of the limited space is typically not specified, but one 2002 HRGC working group report defined it as under 100 ft (HRGC working group, 2002). Other reports have described short storage as being under 200 feet of space between the railroad tracks and a highway intersection, or when signal preemption was used to clear the intersection prior to train arriving at the HRGC. The authors conducted a large literature review and found that short or limited storage has been occasionally mentioned in articles, or as an example of a type of challenging HRGCs. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no research to date has systematically analyzed the effect of crossing types, short or limited storage compared to non-short-storage on the frequency of incidents, driver decision behavior, or attention to safety concerns. The authors pursued research supporting two different tracks under this research program: (1) work with real world data, such as the Federal Railroad Association (FRA), to identify conditions during short-storage crossing incidents, and (2) work on lab studies to understand attention management and decision making using actual crossing scenes. This final report highlights these two studies conducted and analyzed between September 2019 and August 2020. The goal was to identify factors that impact driver decisions in short-storage space crossings using a combination of archived real-world data from the FRA database and lab experiments. After describing the overall goals of the projects, the authors summarize the methods and key findings from the two studies.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTRT13-G-UTC52
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:96728c9456eb6f8d380fc09291c0b2b4e4bfd9782f6dcff05b9659bfdc286986
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/56581/dot_56581_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.66 MB ]