Safety Assessment of Existing Roads: A Preliminary Comprehensive Methodology for Restricted Environments for a Safety Improvement Program

Road safety has become a leading topic in recent research related to transportation. Researchers have studied the effect of different operational and geometric characteristics on road safety such as sight distance, operating speed profiles, design consistency evaluation, and application of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) for the development of local safety performance functions. For safety improvement projects, a comprehensive study is important to get an overall view of safety issues and potential crash causes to provide a basis for conducting cost-effective safety improvement measures. Challenges are met when safety improvement projects are in restricted environments where there is a lack of crash data. Thus, surrogate methods are needed for effective safety assessment. This paper presents a preliminary comprehensive operational analysis using an existing alignment in El Mansoura Governorate in Egypt to appraise the study objective. The methodology includes sight distance analysis, design consistency evaluation, and finally using the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) Safety Performance Function for rural two-lane two-way roadways to quantify safety. Two scenarios of remedial measures are suggested; one scenario is based on the comprehensive methodology suggested and the other one focuses on the road element characteristics which is a typical approach if HSM methodology is used. Benefit-cost ratio analysis is used for measuring the economic justification of each scenario. It is suggested to study the possibility of developing safety performance functions having sight distance and design consistency all together as building parameters which could be of great help especially in countries having poor crash data.

• Record URL:
  • https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/15793
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ACS20 Standing Committee on Safety Performance Analysis.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Torkey, Alaa
  • Alrafee, Abdulrahman
  • Said, Dalia G
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
• Date: 2021

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 28p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Crash modification factors; Geometric design; Highway safety; Methodology; Operating speed; Rural highways; Safety analysis; Sight distance; Two lane highways
• Identifier Terms: Highway Safety Manual; Surrogate Safety Assessment Model
• Geographic Terms: El-Mansoura (Egypt)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01764262
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-00742
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 4 2021 11:00AM