Enhancing NDOT's Traffic Safety Programs - Developing Nevada Specific Safety Performance Functions, Crash Reduction Factors, and Before-After Study Procedures

The release of the first-edition Highway Safety Manual (HSM) includes comprehensive and well-established procedures for conducting various traffic safety analyses. Incorporating these procedures into the Nevada Department of Transportation's (NDOT's) traffic safety program is essential for making cost-effective recommendations on safety improvement projects. Several critical issues have been identified within NDOT's current safety programs: (1) most HSM procedures are new to NDOT's safety engineers, thus timely staff training is necessary; (2) the HSM does not provide Nevada-specific Safety Performance Functions (SPF) and Crash Modification Factors (CMF); (3) the HSM procedures are data-extensive, and identification of the data needs in Nevada is critical; (4) there are multiple procedures that can be applied to a study; however, a clear recommendation on which procedure should be used is not defined in the HSM to meet NDOT's needs; (5) most procedures deal with large amount of data, and in most cases the analyses can only be carried out by using software tools. The objective of this research is to identify areas of critical needs for incorporating the HSM procedures into NDOT's traffic safety programs. These critical needs include development of Nevada-specific SPFs, CMFs, and before-after study procedures.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $181282.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT06-G-0034

  P339-12-803

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Nevada Department of Transportation

  1263 South Stewart Street
  Carson City, NV  United States  89712

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  Department of Transportation
  1200 New Jersey Avneue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Tian, Zong

• Performing Organizations:

  Transportation Research Center

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  4505 Maryland Parkway, MS 4007
  Las Vegas, NV  United States  89154

  University of Nevada, Reno

  College of Engineering
  Reno, NV  United States  89557
• Principal Investigators:

  Tian, Zong

• Start Date: 20120701
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20130630
• Source Data: RiP Project 33412

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash data; Crash modification factors; Highway safety; Traffic safety; Training
• Identifier Terms: Safety Performance Functions
• Geographic Terms: Nevada
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01470216
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Center
• Contract Numbers: DTRT06-G-0034, P339-12-803
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jan 19 2013 1:01AM