Motorized Vehicle Safety

Driver/Pedestrian Understanding and Behavior at Marked and Unmarked Crosswalks

Mitman, Meghan F.
Ragland, David R.
2008

Pedestrian injuries at crosswalk locations represent a significant problem. In 2002, 22.7 percent of US pedestrians involved in collisions were in a crosswalk at the time of the collision, and over 96% of these occurred at an intersection. Almost all crosswalk collisions resulted in pedestrian injury or fatality (98.6 percent), and about one-third resulted in severe or fatal injury (National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) and General Estimates System (GES) 2002). As the owner of the California State Highway System, Caltrans is responsible for providing access to safe and...

Applying Safety Treatments To Rail-Highway At-Grade Crossings

Cooper, Douglas L.
Ragland, David R.
2012

At-grade rail crossings provide different levels of warnings and/or barriers to alert drivers to the potential dangers presented by approaching trains. For some drivers, an activated warning system, rather than being a signal to stop, merely serves as a cue for the need to make a decision whether or not to cross. In California, for the ten-year period from 2001 to 2010, the result was 1,033 trainvehicle crashes resulting in 157 deaths and 458 injuries. The best solution to rail crossing crashes is to remove the need for the driver to engage in a potentially faulty decision-making process...

Building a Highway Linear Referencing System from Preexisting Reference Marker Measurements for Transportation Data Management

Bigham, John M.
Kang, Sanghyeok
2013

To manage events associated with highways, data systems have been developed to store relevant event information. To reap the full benefits of geographic information system technologies, the relative locations can be integrated into a linear referencing system. The objective of this paper is to present a methodology for building a highway linear referencing system by applying preexisting marker measurements to a digital street network. The system was developed for locating motor vehicle collisions in California and resulted in improved accuracy compared to a previously developed...

Variations in Teens' Perception of Risk Factors for Teen Motor Vehicle Collision Injuries

Chen, Katherine L.
Cooper, Jill F.
Grembek, Offer
Henk, Russell
Tisdale, Stacey M.
2014

Teen drivers, especially males, are known to be at greater risk of being involved in a motor vehicle collision than any other age group. While novice teen drivers’ primary risk factors are commonly known, less is known about what teens perceive as risk factors for peers getting hurt or killed in motor vehicle collisions. This mixed methods study uses survey data from the Teens in the Drivers Seat (TDS) program in California to explore (1) teens' perceived risk factors for motor vehicle collision injury; and (2) the relationship between perceived risks and age, gender, and driving...

Error Consideration for Geocoding Police Reported Collision Data in California

Bigham, John M.
Oum, Sang Hyouk
2014

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are frequently used to analyze collision data. In order to 3 utilize GIS, the data must be geocoded, or assigned a latitude and longitude coordinate by 4 translating a descriptive location onto street network data. However, the ability for accurate 5 spatial analysis can be limited by geocoding errors that may occur due to limitations in data 6 collection technologies, incorrect data entry due to human error, or inaccurate street reference 7 data. In the state of California there is an increased opportunity for data entry errors, given the 8 long...

Using Variable Speed Limits To Reduce Rear-End Collision Risks Near Recurrent Bottlenecks

Li, Zhibin
Liu, Pan
Bigham, John M.
Ragland, David R.
2013

Rear-end collisions would occur if vehicle speeds decrease abruptly when encountering kinematic waves (KWs) emanating from active bottlenecks. This study aims to develop a control strategy in variable speed limits (VSL) to reduce rear-end collision risks near recurrent bottlenecks. Using the crash prediction model developed for rear-end collisions related to risky KWs, the effectiveness of VSL control strategies were evaluated in the cell transmission model (CTM). Several strategies were tested in sequence to determine the best case for risk reduction. Results of this study show that the...

Acceptance of drinking and driving and alcohol-involved driving crashes in California

MacLeod, Kara E.
Karriker-Jaffe, Katherine J.
Ragland, David R.
Satariano, William A.
Kelley-Baker, Tara
Lacey, John H.
2015

Background: Alcohol-impaired driving accounts for substantial proportion of traffic-related fatalities in the U.S. Risk perceptions for drinking and driving have been associated with various measures of drinking and driving behavior. In an effort to understand how to intervene and to better understand how risk perceptions may be shaped, this study explored whether an objective environmental-level measure (proportion of alcohol-involved driving crashes in one’s residential city) were related to individual-level perceptions and behavior.

Methods: Using data from a 2012 cross-sectional...

The Impact of Health Problems on Driving Status Among Older Adults

MacLeod, Kara E.
Satariano, William A.
Ragland, David R.
2014

Objective: This study assessed the impact of health problems on driving status (current driver vs. ex-driver) among older adults to identify which of those health problems have the greatest individual and population impact on driving cessation.

Methods: Data were from baseline and a 5 year follow-up wave of a longitudinal survey of adults aged 55 years and older (N¼1279). The impact of several health problems on driving status was assessed using a relative risk ratio and a population attributable risk percent. Analyses controlled for age, gender, and the presence of additional...

Using Time-Based Metrics to Compare Crash Risk Across Modes and Locations

Guler, S. Ilgin
Grembek, Offer
Ragland, David R.
2012

The objective of this work is to identify better metrics of exposure when comparing traffic crash risk across modes or across locations. We propose that total time travelled should be used for road user exposure to crash risk. The idea behind this is that travel time reflects the differences in speeds across different modes and hence should be used as the basic exposure metric from which crash risk based on other metrics, such as travel distance, can easily be derived. We also propose that when comparing crash risk of different modes across different locations the time-based mode share...

Safety Assessment of Uncontrolled Intersections Using Both Conflict Probability and Severity

Ma, Yingying
Qin, Xiaoran
Grembek, Offer
Chen, Zhiwei
2016

This paper presents a method to assess the safety of uncontrolled intersections considering both conflict probability and severity, which are two major properties of traffic conflicts. This method provides not only the safety level of the entire intersection but also the distribution of safety within intersections. Intersections are modelled by a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system and the internal space of intersections is divided into cells. Firstly, vehicle movement characteristics of at uncontrolled intersections are modelled. Secondly, conflict probability of each cell within...