Crash Evaluation of Roadsides in Urban and Suburban Contexts

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) places strong emphasis on multimodal design, flexibility, and addressing bicyclist and pedestrian serious injuries and fatalities. Pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities account for approximately 20% of all roadway fatalities. Research is needed to help state departments of transportation identify roadside design or in-roadway or cross-section treatments that reduce vehicle speeds and that will significantly reduce vulnerable road user fatal and serious injury crashes. The 7th edition of A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (the AASHTO Green Book) provides some qualitative guidance on roadside design within urban or restricted environments, but there also is a need for quantitative data on the benefits and drawbacks associated with lateral offsets and roadside treatments. Roadway designers currently lack the information needed to make related data-driven decisions on roadside and in-roadway design. The objective of this research is to develop a guide to support designers’ efforts to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate potential safety impacts of various roadside design configurations. The guide will include measures to determine safety impacts on each type of user (drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, etc.) for each configuration. The research will provide greater insight into how roadside design decisions—primarily lateral offsets—affect the safety of all road users in different urban and suburban roadway contexts. The research will explore how future Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) specifications could offer new guidance for evaluating safety systems for vulnerable road users.

• Record URL:
  • http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=6056
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Contract to a Performing Organization has not yet been awarded.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Proposed
• Funding: $500,000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 17-151

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)

  444 North Capitol Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Retting, Richard

• Start Date: 20260608
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Highway design; Pedestrian safety; Roadside; Traffic safety; Vulnerable road users
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01992187
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project 17-151
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Jun 9 2026 3:10PM