Safety Impacts of Reduced Visibility in Inclement Weather

Most of the information used by drivers is acquired visually. In spite of its importance, visibility conditions at the time of a crash are often not documented at a high level of detail. A quantified investigation of the visibility level at the time of a crash was undertaken to investigate the increase in risk associated with driving during periods of reduced visibility. The study method blended data collected from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with reported crashes in Florida. From the thousands of logged weather events collected by NOAA, the researchers isolated time periods of normal visibility and comparable time periods of reduced visibility in a matched-pairs study. The crash data were contained in the Roadway Information Database (RID) compiled for the Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP2). The RID contains several geometric and traffic variables that allow for analyses to account for effects of factors other than visibility. The findings indicate that, as expected, the likelihood of a crash increases during periods of low visibility, despite the tendency for less traffic and lower speeds to prevail during these times.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AH010 Standing Committee on Surface Transportation Weather.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Das, Subasish
  • Brimley, Bradford K
  • Lindheimer, Tomas
  • Zupancich, Michelle
• 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; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash causes; Risk assessment; Visibility; Weather conditions
• Geographic Terms: Florida
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01625671
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-03899
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 9 2017 11:11AM