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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

The Marginal Impacts of Design, Traffic, Weather and Related Interactions on Roadside Crashes

Abstract:

A multivariate model that incorporates the effects of design, traffic, weather and related interactions with design variables on reported roadside crashes is presented. in this paper. A sample of 318 one-mile sections from the Washington State highway network were modeled. The results suggest that weather effects play a statistically significant role in roadside crash occurrence. In particular, it was found that in addition to precipitation, average monthly snowfall exceeding 4 inches as well as interactions between snow depths and horizontal curves were found to have a statistically significant effect on roadside crash frequency probabilities. The marginal effects of these variables were also statistically significant; furthermore, the contribution of weather and related interactions to the likelihood of roadside crash frequencies is approximately 19%, while design main effects contributed to 33% while traffic and design interactions contributed to 36%. Weather interactions with design contributed to approximately 6% of the overall likelihood. Traffic as a main effect contributed only 6% to the overall roadside crash likelihood.

Source(s):

83rd Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting; University of Washington, Parametrix and Washington State DOT. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2003

Author:

Shankar, Chayanan, Sittikariya, Shyu, Juvva, Milton

Keywords:


Crashes
Safety
Benefits
Traffic modeling
Precipitation
Snow

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