Identifying Secondary Crash Characteristics for California Highway System

This paper uses the crash records, which are part of the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS), for the California highway system from 1999 and 2000 to identify the prevailing characteristics of secondary crashes for the aforementioned system. The crash records are aggregated to the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District level for analysis. The study compares differences in the characteristics of secondary crashes and primary crashes with respect to time of day, roadway classification, primary collision factors, severity level and type of accident. This study defines a secondary crash, which is any crash that results from the non-recurring congestion or emergency response associated with a primary crash, as any crash that occurs in the same direction within sixty minutes of a primary crash and no more than two miles upstream. For all comparisons, a proportional test is used to assess the presence of significant differences between secondary crashes and primary crashes. One such comparison is a comparison between rural and urban Caltrans’ Districts. As expected, a higher proportion of crashes in urban Districts are classified as secondary crashes than in rural Districts. The typical secondary crash on the State of California Highway System is a rear-end, property damage only crash on a greater than a four lane urban freeway that occurs during one of the peak periods and is caused by excessive speed.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Hirunyanitiwattana, Worapong
  • Mattingly, Stephen P
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2006-1-22 to 2006-1-26
• Date: 2006

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 85th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash analysis; Crash characteristics; Crash records; Crash severity; Crash types; Freeways; Highway safety; Peak hour traffic; Periods of the day; Rear end crashes; Rural areas; Secondary crashes; Speeding; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety; Types of roads; Types of roads by number of lanes; Urban areas; Urban highways
• Uncontrolled Terms: Primary collisions; Property damage
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01020097
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 06-2900
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 3 2006 11:09AM