Effects of Increasing Freeway Speed Limits on Crashes: Case Study from Israel
The speed limits in Israel were updated twice in recent years: in January 2011 and again in January 2013. The updates were by 10 to 20 km/h in twenty-six segments in seven different highways, with total length of 148 km. This study explores the change in safety that resulted from this action. The authors use three different approaches: (1) a simple before-and-after approach (2) before-and-after study with a comparison group (3) before-and-after study with traffic flow correction, using the empirical Bayes method. All the methods showed decreases in the number of crashes after the speed limit change. Relative to one of the comparison groups the decreases were statistically significant, 18% (CI=[9%,28%]) by method (2) and 21% (CI=[12%,30%]) by method (3). This finding, which suggests an increase in safety, contradicts prior knowledge about the effect of raising the speed limit, an issue that may deserve additional exploration in additional studies.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB20 Standing Committee on Safety Data, Analysis and Evaluation.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Harari, Aasf
- Musicant, Oren
- Bar-Gera, Hillel
- Schechtman, Edna
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 14p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Crash causes; Freeways; Speed limits; Traffic flow
- Geographic Terms: Israel
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01625586
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-03159
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 7 2017 9:47AM