Predicting Priorities for Installing Over-Height Vehicle Detection/Warning Systems for Bridges

Although collisions of over-height vehicles or vehicles carrying over-height loads with a bridge superstructure may be considered a rare event, occurrences of such events are not uncommon. When such an event takes place, the damage sustained by the bridge superstructure may be substantial- sometimes even leading to total collapse of the bridge. Out of the available solutions to this problem the most promising and attractive one involves the installation of over-height vehicle detection and warning systems, however, such systems have diverse installation costs, effectiveness and longevity. Moreover, yearly budget constraints limit the number of such installations and there is no guideline as to which bridges should be equipped with such devices. In this study a relatively simple but effective method is developed using only two basic items of information about the bridge (minimum vertical under-clearance) and total number of traffic lanes under the bridge to produce a priority ranking based upon the likelihood of the bridge being hit by an over-height truck. Bridge collision datasets were obtained from three state DOTs- New York, Missouri and Texas and these were used to develop the predictive procedure.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHD37 Standing Committee on Bridge Preservation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Murshed, Mohammad Neaz
  • Barrett, Imelda
  • Machemehl, Randy B
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 13p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridge superstructures; Bridges; Height; Vehicles; Warning systems
• Geographic Terms: Missouri; New York (State); Texas
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01587557
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-1208
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 27 2016 5:10PM