Abstract
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) reported between 2016 and 2017, fatal crashes in work zones increased by 3%, while fatal crashes outside of work zones decreased by 1.5%. The FHWA also reported that work zones account for approximately 10% of the nation’s overall congestion and 24% of unexpected interstate delays. This paper reports on a study of 23 construction work zones that covered approximately 150 centerline miles of Indiana interstate roadway in the summer of 2019. Approximately 50% of all interstate crashes for the period of May to September 2019 occurred within or in an approach upstream or downstream of one of these work zones. Commercially available vehicle hard-braking event data is used for the study and geofenced to the work zone approaches and limits. This research examined 196,215 hard-braking events over a 2-month period in the summer of 2019 and 3132 crashes over the same 2-month period in 2018 and 2019 for the 23 interstate work zones. The study found there were approximately 1 crash/mile for every 147 hard-braking events in and around a construction site. The R2 was approximately 0.85. The paper concludes by recommending that hard-braking event data be used by agencies to quickly identify emerging work zone locations that show relatively large number of hard-braking events for further evaluation.
Highlights
MotivationThere are approximately 800 fatal work zone crashes in the US annually, most of which occur in the summer and fall, and over 25% of those crashes involve large trucks or buses (FHWA, 2018)
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) reported between 2016 and 2017 (FHWA, 2018) fatal crashes in work zones increased by 3%, while fatal crashes outside of work zones decreased by 1.5%
Callouts (i) in Fig. 9a, b indicate an elevated frequency of crashes were in the vicinity of mile markers (MM) 61, the same region that exhibited an elevated number of hard-braking event counts
Summary
There are approximately 800 fatal work zone crashes in the US annually, most of which occur in the summer and fall, and over 25% of those crashes involve large trucks or buses (FHWA, 2018). The FHWA reported that work zones account for approximately 10% of the nation’s overall congestion and 24% of unexpected interstate delays (FHWA 2018). Crash report data has been used to identify opportunities to improve the design of future construction zones. Hard-braking event data can be obtained daily from commercial providers with a precise timestamp and geo-location information. This paper investigates the feasibility of using hard-braking event data to identify opportunities to improve the safety and operating efficiency of construction work zones
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