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Author: Rebecca Elise Franke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781321063035
Category : Petroleum industry and trade
Languages : en
Pages : 90
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Book Description
Roadway safety is an integral part of a functioning infrastructure. Many types of vehicles use the highway system for a variety of purposes, and each affects the roadways differently. Aside from commuter traffic and leisurely travel, a major use of the highway system is the transport of goods. These goods are typically transferred in large trucks. As supply and demand grows, the amount of trucks on the roadways needed to transport goods increases. The United States has experienced constant growth in the amount of freight transported by truck in the last few years. While overall national freight growth is constant, localized effects are more varied. Freight traffic may spike in areas based on events such as a new factory, or the discovery of a natural resource. These additions to a localized area can be taxing on the citizens and infrastructure, and the effect that truck traffic has on these areas may be more concentrated. The state of Wyoming has begun to experience a large increase in truck traffic on some of its local and county roads due to an increase in oil and gas production. The primary measure to evaluate the safety of a roadway is the number of crashes. This study addresses the effect that large truck traffic is having on the safety of various road sizes and classifications. For this study, large trucks are defined as vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds and the safety is measured by a crash's severity. An investigation on past literature revealed that many studies have been done on the factors involved in and the causation of heavy truck crashes, but none address the causation and effect the truck crashes have on different types of areas. Answers to this question may give transportation engineers guidelines on how to address truck safety in specific types of areas. A descriptive analysis of statewide crash data revealed many different trends in crashes. Most truck crashes occurred on interstates and primary federal highways. When road conditions were not clear, crashes more often occurred when snowy weather and icy roads were present. Heavy trucks were involved in multi-vehicle crashes less often than passenger vehicles. To verify some of the effects from the descriptive analysis, a logistic regression model was used to further explore the results. A localized study was also conducted to acquire better knowledge of the effect that trucks were having on local roads. This crash analysis focused on four counties in Eastern Wyoming and found that where truck traffic volumes have been increasing, so have crash rates in those counties.
Author: Rebecca Elise Franke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781321063035
Category : Petroleum industry and trade
Languages : en
Pages : 90
Get Book Here
Book Description
Roadway safety is an integral part of a functioning infrastructure. Many types of vehicles use the highway system for a variety of purposes, and each affects the roadways differently. Aside from commuter traffic and leisurely travel, a major use of the highway system is the transport of goods. These goods are typically transferred in large trucks. As supply and demand grows, the amount of trucks on the roadways needed to transport goods increases. The United States has experienced constant growth in the amount of freight transported by truck in the last few years. While overall national freight growth is constant, localized effects are more varied. Freight traffic may spike in areas based on events such as a new factory, or the discovery of a natural resource. These additions to a localized area can be taxing on the citizens and infrastructure, and the effect that truck traffic has on these areas may be more concentrated. The state of Wyoming has begun to experience a large increase in truck traffic on some of its local and county roads due to an increase in oil and gas production. The primary measure to evaluate the safety of a roadway is the number of crashes. This study addresses the effect that large truck traffic is having on the safety of various road sizes and classifications. For this study, large trucks are defined as vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds and the safety is measured by a crash's severity. An investigation on past literature revealed that many studies have been done on the factors involved in and the causation of heavy truck crashes, but none address the causation and effect the truck crashes have on different types of areas. Answers to this question may give transportation engineers guidelines on how to address truck safety in specific types of areas. A descriptive analysis of statewide crash data revealed many different trends in crashes. Most truck crashes occurred on interstates and primary federal highways. When road conditions were not clear, crashes more often occurred when snowy weather and icy roads were present. Heavy trucks were involved in multi-vehicle crashes less often than passenger vehicles. To verify some of the effects from the descriptive analysis, a logistic regression model was used to further explore the results. A localized study was also conducted to acquire better knowledge of the effect that trucks were having on local roads. This crash analysis focused on four counties in Eastern Wyoming and found that where truck traffic volumes have been increasing, so have crash rates in those counties.
Author: Nicholas J. Garber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intelligent transportation systems
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
The use of large trucks has steadily increased since the passage of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act to the point where they now account for over 50% of vehicle traffic on some highways in Virginia. Projections now forecast that large-truck travel will grow at twice the rate of personal vehicle travel in the near future. Although several studies have been conducted to determine the effects of large trucks on safety on multilane primary and interstate highway systems, the effects on two-lane secondary roads have been largely ignored. This study identified the causal factors and predominant types of large-truck crashes on two-lane secondary roads in Virginia and compared the large-truck crash rates for two-lane secondary roads and two-lane primary roads. The study also identified advanced technologies associated with intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that can be used to minimize the causal factors of large-truck crashes on these roads. The results showed that large-truck crash rates are significantly higher on two-lane secondary roads than on two-lane primary roads, with the predominant types of crashes being angle, rear end, sideswipe same direction, and sideswipe opposite direction. The study identified several ITS technologies that can be used to mitigate the predominant causal factors and recommends a pilot study to test the effectiveness of one such system.
Author: Muhammad Tahmidul Haq
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climbing lanes
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
I-80 in Wyoming is characterized by heavy truck traffic, with an average of 47 percent of heavy trucks in the traffic flow. This research analyzes the impacts of truck traffic along I-80 in Wyoming, as well as mitigation strategies to minimize negative impacts, through analyses of safety and operational implications that result from the interactions between trucks and other vehicles. Various traffic, geometrical, and weather characteristics were found significant to increase truck-related crashes, whereas the presence of climbing lanes was found to have potential safety and operational benefits. The analysis of occupant injury severity in passenger car-truck collisions shows that car drivers are more responsible than truck drivers contributing more severe injuries. The disaggregate modeling approach shows significant differences in both the combination and the magnitude of the impact of variables that justify the importance of examining the injury severity of truck-involved crashes broken down by vehicle types, truck configurations, and driving actions. The crash rate analysis shows a higher tire failure rate for trucks compared to the total tire failure rate considering equal vehicle miles traveled as exposure. Benefit-cost analysis for climbing lane installations indicates that the installation of climbing lanes has a significant potential to improve traffic performances for a 20-year planning horizon, with aggregated benefits significantly outperforming the corresponding costs. Findings from this study are expected to help the Wyoming Department of Transportation and policymakers take necessary actions in reducing truck-related crashes and improve the overall operational performance by targeting appropriate strategies and proper resource allocation.
Author: Shekhar Govind
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Author: United States. National Transportation Safety Board
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 88
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Traffic accidents
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This report describes two major studies that were conducted to determine the effect of truck size and weight on accident experience and traffic operations. The first study involved a field evaluation of the effect of truck size and weight on traffic operations. The second study addressed the effect of truck size and weight on accident experience. The field study examined traffic operational effects associated with truck size and weight. Selected highway geometric conditions were: upgrades (short, long; slight, steep), downgrades (long, steep), curves (freeway, non-freeway), grade/curve combinations, merge areas, ramps, and urban intersections. Matched weight and operational data were gathered on nearly 6,000 trucks ranging in gross weight from approximately 20,000 to 160,000 pounds. Extensive traffic operations measures obtained via electronic roadway sensors included: flow (e.g., speed, acceleration), perturbations (e.g., speed variance, deviation from traffic speed), accident potential (e.g., closure rate, projected collision time), delay (e.g., speed delays by following vehicles), and passing behavior (e.g., relative passing speed). The objective of the accident study was to determine the effect the size and weight of large trucks has on accidents and traffic operations. The effect on accidents was determined by comparing the accident rates for a variet of truck types defined in terms of configuration, size, and weight. The accident rate is obtained by dividing the number of accidents of a specific truck type, size, and weight by the exposure mileage (opportunity to have an accident) for that same truck type, size, and weight. Data were collected for all large truck accidents occurring on 78 roadway segments in six states. In total, 2,112 accident involvements were investigated in-depth over a 1-1/2-year period in 1976-1977.
Author: Qun Liu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Traffic flow
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
The continuous growth of freight transportation over recent years has resulted in an increasing proportion of commercial vehicles on our nations' highways which has led to higher truck volumes and more severe truck-related crashes every year. Safety proponents have therefore been advocating for more restrictions to be placed on these commercial vehicles in order to reduce the interaction of these larger vehicles and passenger cars. A popular strategy is the use of different lane restrictions for trucks. However, the effectiveness of these restrictions for trucks differs from case to case due to unique factors of each site, including the type of restriction used, traffic conditions and the geometric characteristics at the site. This has motivated the author to conduct this study to evaluate the impact of these restrictions on traffic operations and safety on freeways with different traffic and geometric characteristics. For the safety evaluation, this research measures the impact of different truck lane restriction strategies (TLRS) using conflict as the measurement of effectiveness (MOE). Conflict has been proven to be highly related to traffic crushes on freeways (FHWA, 1990; Sayed and Zein, 1999; Kaub, 2000). The high frequency of conflicts has also made it possible to collect adequate data for statistical analysis. The MOEs used to evaluate the impact of different lane restrictions on operational performance were lane changes, average speed, speed distribution, and volume distribution. Due to the lack of existing highway locations with different lane restrictions considered in this study, the conflict data were collected using a traffic simulation tool - PARAMICS V3.0 (Quadstone Ltd., 2000), which can simulate the emergent interaction between vehicles but not random crashes on the road network. The effectiveness of different lane restrictions in terms of the above MOEs were evaluated for 14,400 different simulation scenarios by varying lane restriction strategies, traffic conditions (volume, truck percentage) and geometric characteristics (gradient, speed limit, interchange density). The simulation results showed that all the geometric and traffic characteristics had a significant impact on freeway safety and operation. In addition, truck percentage and volume were identified as key factors that had a significant impact on the selection of the optimal truck lane restriction strategy. The ANOVA analyses indicated that the degree of effect of truck lane restriction strategies on safety intensify with the increase in truck percentage and traffic volume. Optimal alternatives of truck lane restriction strategies under different truck percentages and volumes were identified with the objective of reducing traffic conflicts and enhancing LOS (level of service). Guidelines were then developed for the application of truck lane restrictions under alternative traffic and geometric conditions.
Author: R. F. Benekohal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This study was conducted to determine the truck drivers' travel characteristics, concerns about work zone traffic control devices, and assessment of work zone features, as well as to determine the location of accidents and bad driving situations based on the experiences and perceptions of truck drivers. A statewide survey of semi-truck drivers was conducted in 6 locations in Illinois. The questionnaire contained 43 questions about truck drivers and travel characteristics, drivers' assessment of work zone features and traffic control devices, their accident and bad driving situation experiences, and their suggestions for improving traffic flow and safety in the work zones. About 930 truck drivers participated in the survey, and the responses from 834 of them were found suitable for further data analysis. The frequency of the responses to each question were analyzed. Also correlation analyses were conducted to identify the relationships among the surveyed questions. Different statistical tests were used for data analysis. Volume II of the final report, contains a detailed report of the study, including all of the information that is included in Volume I, which contains the summary of findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
Author: National Research Council (U.S.). Highway Research Board
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Highway engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1074
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Book Description
Author: R. F. Benekohal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Roads
Languages : en
Pages : 82
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Book Description
This study was conducted to determine the truck drivers' travel characteristics, concerns about work zone traffic control devices, and assessment of work zone features, as well as to determine the location of accidents and bad driving situations based on the experiences and perceptions of truck drivers. A statewide survey of semi-truck drivers was conducted in 6 locations in Illinois. The questionnaire contained 43 questions about truck drivers and travel characteristics, drivers' assessment of work zone features and traffic control devices, their accident and bad driving situation experiences, and their suggestions for improving traffic flow and safety in the work zones. About 930 truck drivers participated in the survey, and the responses from 834 of them were found suitable for further data analysis. The frequency of the responses to each question were analyzed. Also correlation analyses were conducted to identify the relationships among the surveyed questions. Different statistical tests were used for data analysis. Volume II of the final report, contains a detailed report of the study, including all of the information that is included in Volume I, which contains the summary of findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
