Facilitating Work Zone Safety Improvements through Detailed Crash Report Narratives

Work zone crashes kill hundreds of motorists and pedestrians every year; however, the police crash reports, diagrams, and narratives rarely provide enough detail to identify any underlying work zone safety concerns. A study of crash reports in the United States indicated that the information available through coded crash reports is often inconsistent from State to State and definitions to describe work zone crashes often neglect to identify whether a work zone actively contributed to a crash. An additional analysis of work zone crash narratives indicated that, even in States that require officers to “list all [work zone] warning signs in the narrative,” over half of the narratives were missing that information or any other information regarding work zone signing, traffic control devices, or work zone conditions. This paper describes an easy-to-use tool that aids law enforcement officers in identifying relevant work zone related information to include in the crash reports. Its intent is to improve the usability of crash report narratives in order to correctly assign whether or not a crash is directly related to a work zone, with an end goal of improving road user and worker safety.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB40 Traffic Law Enforcement.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Donoughe, Kelly
  • Atkinson, Jennifer
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; Maps; References;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash characteristics; Crash data; Highway safety; Police reports; Recordkeeping; Traffic law enforcement; Work zone safety
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies; I84: Personal Injuries;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01556840
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-4399
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 12 2015 3:19PM