Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Best Practices > Publications > Publication Titles

Title:

Weather Impacts on Traffic Safety and Operations

Abstract:

Weather affects many aspects of transportation, but there are three predominant and measurable dimensions of inclement weather's impact on highway traffic: traffic demand, traffic safety, and traffic flow relationships. Understanding these impacts will help highway agencies, transportation companies, and individuals better manage the risks and uncertainties inherent in inclement weather conditions. Traditionally highway agencies, transportation companies, and individuals have primarily reacted to inclement weather and attempted to mitigate its impacts. With a better understanding of weather's impacts, however, and with better weather forecasts, transportation agencies, transportation firms, and individuals can more proactively manage their requirements and actions before and during inclement weather. This paper describes work being done at Iowa State University's Center for Weather Impacts on Mobility and Safety (C-WIMS) and Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE) to quantify weather's impact on highway traffic.

Source(s):

Institute of Transportation Engineers Annual Meeting. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2006

Author:

Maze, Hans, Agarwal, Burchett

Keywords:


Adverse weather
Traffic management
Volume
Mobility
Crashes
Driver behavior
Winter storm
Capacity

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.
Office of Operations