Citation

Wood J, Donnell ET. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2020; 146: e105734.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2020.105734

PMID

32827844

Abstract

Roadway departure crashes contribute to a large proportion of fatal and injury crashes in the United States. These crash types are more likely to occur along horizontal curve sections of a roadway. Countermeasures that prevent vehicles from departing the roadway is one method to mitigate roadway departure crashes. Pennsylvania has deployed on-pavement horizontal curve warning markings in advance of horizontal curves on two-lane rural highways as a roadway departure crash reduction strategy. This study used an Empirical Bayes (EB) before-after study design to evaluate the safety effects of the horizontal curve warning pavement markings. A total of 263 treatment sites and more than 21,000 reference sites were included in the evaluation. Crash modification factors were developed for total, fatal plus injury, run-off-road, nighttime, nighttime run-off-road, and nighttime fatal plus injury crashes. The point estimates for each of these crashes ranged from 0.65 to 0.77 - the results were statistically significant for total and fatal plus injury crashes at the 95th-percentile confidence level.

Language: en

Keywords

Safety; Empirical Bayes; Horizontal curves; Pavement markings; Rural two-lane highways