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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Best Practices > Publications > Publication Titles

Title:

The Use of Mobile Video Data Collection Equipment to Investigate Winter Weather Vehicle Speeds

Abstract:

Research involves traffic and weather data (i.e., visibility, roadway snow cover, volume, speed, and headway/gap data) data collected by trailer-mounted AutoScope video data collection/monitoring system located on Northeast 142nd Avenue Bridge over I-35 in Polk County, Iowa. Collected data used to predict vehicle speed and speed variability. Results indicate that average winter weather speed was 16% lower than that in speed under dry conditions. In winter weather, speed variation was 307% higher than variation during dry conditions. The resulting model predicted that off-peak winter weather speeds would decrease by 3.9 mph when visibility fell below one-quarter mile, and decrease by 7.3 mph when snow began to cover roadway lanes. Additional research is required to verify and refine the model.

Source(s):

79th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, Iowa State University and Iowa DOT. For a copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2000

Author:

Knapp, Smithson

Keywords:


Visibility
Adverse weather
Vehicle detection
Speed

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