Examination of Crash Rates and Injury Severity Before, During, and After Roadworks at High-Speed Regional Roads

Abstract

Although work zones pose risks to roadworkers and motorists, undertaking roadworks is important to maintain and upgrade road networks. Many researchers have examined the associations between safety levels and roadwork activities and have produced inconsistent findings. Whereas some researchers have compared safety levels before and during roadwork activities, few compared the safety levels at three stages of roadworks: before, during, and after roadworks, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the associations. In addition to the inconsistent findings, another significant gap exists in the literature: existing research on all three stages is dated and scarce. To address this important gap, this paper aims to examine the associations between safety levels and three stages of roadworks. Using police-reported crash data from twenty-four high-speed road segments in the regional areas of New South Wales, Australia, this paper presents findings from a statistical analysis of the data to understand how crash rates and injury severity levels changed across the three stages. Results showed that crash rates for all crashes, as well as for fatal and injury crashes, reduced significantly from the before period to the during period, and then further to the after period. Greater reductions in crash rates were also observed for crashes that did not involve a heavy vehicle than the heavy vehicle-involved crashes, crashes that were not related to speeding or fatigue issues than those with such issues, crashes that occurred during weekdays than weekends, and crashes that occurred at straight sections than at curved sections.