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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Synthesis of Studies on Speed and Safety

Abstract:

This paper examines previous studies on the relationship between speed an safety and gives an overview of research interests. Weather affects safety through impaired visibility, decrease stability and reduced controllability. One study found that drivers appear to compensate for increased injury risks in that injuries are more frequent but less severe in adverse weather crashes. Another study found that speed variance is also impacted by weather. The standard deviation doubles during fog events and triples during snow. This study also found an average reduction of 0.7 mph for every mph that wind speed exceeds 25 mph. Another study estimated that wind speed above 30 mph reduced free flow speed by 5.6 mph.

Source(s):

80th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, China Communication and Transportation Association. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2001

Author:

Feng

Keywords:


Safety
Adverse weather

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