Safety Effects and Cost Benefit of Milled Shoulder Rumble Strips
This paper describes how there are almost 20,000 crashes with personal injury on motorways in Germany every year and approximately 20% of these crashes involve running off the road to the right. Besides the loss of control over the vehicle due to inappropriate speed or due to a conflict situation with another vehicle, a major part of these crashes is caused by inattentiveness or fatigue. In the framework of a pilot trial rumble strips have been milled into the shoulders of the German motorway A24. The target behind this measure was to test the effects of rumble strips on the crash figures on this 35.9 km long route section, especially crashes caused by fatigue. In order to determine the effectiveness of the rumble strips, a before-and-after investigation with control section (86.7 km) was carried out. The result showed that rumble strips positively affect the severity of the crashes but have only little influence on the crash count. Statistically significant results could be determined for two crash criteria. The number of run-off the road crashes with leaving the carriageway to the right was reduced by 43% and the number of crashes caused by "other mistakes made by driver" was reduced by 34%. When calculating the cost-benefit ratio (CBR) it was found that the costs of the measure were relatively small while the benefit on the other hand was very high in terms of the saved crash costs.
- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
Association for European Transport (AET)
1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
London W14 0RL, -
Authors:
- Hegewald, Andreas
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Conference:
- European Transport Conference, 2009
- Location: Leiden Leeuwenhorst Conference Centre , Netherlands
- Date: 2009-10-5 to 2009-10-7
- Publication Date: 2009
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Web
- Features: Bibliography; Photos; Tables;
- Pagination: 6p
- Monograph Title: European Transport Conference, 2009 Proceedings
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Attention; Benefit cost analysis; Fatigue (Physiological condition); Human factors in crashes; Ran off road crashes; Road shoulders; Rumble strips; Single vehicle crashes; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety
- Geographic Terms: Germany
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01349419
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: TRIS
- Created Date: Aug 10 2011 10:42AM