CENG 4351

Traffic Engineering: Operations and

Control

Mena Souliman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
University of Texas at Tyler

Slide No. 1
 CENG 4351
Traffic Engineering: Operations and
Control

Human Traffic Safety: Studies, Statistics, and

Programs
Chapter 11

Slide No. 2
 Presentation Outline
Introduction
Approaches to Highway Safety
Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
Accident Statistics
Site Analysis

Slide No. 3
 Introduction
• In 2007, 41,059 people were killed in accidents on U.S. highways in
a total of 6.024 million police-reported accidents
– More people have been killed in highway accidents in the United States than
in all of the wars in which the nation has been involved, from the
Revolutionary War through the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
– Because police-reported accidents are generally believed to make up
only 50% of all accidents occurring, this implies a staggering total of
almost 12 million accidents for the year 

Slide No. 4
 Introduction
• A great deal of effort on every level of the profession is focused on
the reduction of number of annual accidents
– U.S. highways have become increasingly safe for a variety of reasons
• The number of annual fatalities peaked in 1972 with 54,589 deaths
in highway-related accidents
– Total number of fatalities has declined by over 23% since 1972
– The decline in the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle-miles traveled
(VMT) is even more spectacular
 In 1966, the rate stood at 5.5 fatalities per 100 million VMT
 In 2007, the rate was 1.37 fatalities per 100 million VMT, a decline of 75%

Slide No. 5
 Introduction
• There are many reasons for this decline:
– Highway design has incorporated many safety improvements that provide
for a more “forgiving” environment for drivers
– Better alignments, improvements in roadside and guardrail design
– Improved vehicle design
 Padded dashboards, seat belts and shoulder harnesses, airbags, and energy-
absorbing crumple zones
– Drivers are more familiar with driving in congested urban environments and
on limited-access facilities
• Despite vastly improved accident and fatality rates, the
number of fatalities remains high
 Americans continue to drive more vehicle-miles each year

Slide No. 6
 Introduction

• Although the fatality rate trend has been continuously declining,

the fatality trend has been less consistent
– Significant decreases in both fatalities and fatality rates in the mid-1970s
coincided with the imposition of the national 55-mi/h speed limit
• Originally enacted as a measure to reduce fuel consumption
– The dramatic decrease in fatalities and fatality rates was a critical,
somewhat unanticipated benefit

Slide No. 7
 Introduction
• Between 1996 and 1998, the federal government gradually, then
completely, eliminated the 55-mi/h speed limit
• The national speed limit had been loosely enforced at best
– States had to file formal reports on speed behavior each year and were
threatened with partial loss of federal aid highway funds if too high a
percentage of drivers were found to be exceeding 55 mi/h
• By the mid-1990s, many states were in technical violation of these
requirements
• Despite terrible predictions, lifting of the 55-mi/h national speed limit
did not lead to dramatic increases in fatalities or fatality rates
– Rates continued to decline, and number of fatalities has been relatively
stable over the past decade
– States began systematically to increase speed limits on freeways to 65
mi/h or more

Slide No. 8
 Introduction
• 2007
– 31% of all fatal crashes had speeding as a contributing factor
• 2008
– Huge increases in fuel prices
– Unexpectedly large decrease in fatalities
– 42 of the 50 states reported a significant decrease in the number of
fatalities from 2007 to 2008
• Drivers were driving less, choosing the trips that were important
enough to make, and driving slower, all to save gasoline
– Fatalities have decreased to a level not seen since the 1960s 
– For the first time in over 50 years, the number of fatalities dropped
below 40,000 for 2008   

Slide No. 9
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Improving highway safety involves consideration of three elements
influencing traffic operations:
– The driver
– The vehicle, and
– The roadway
• Unfortunately, the traffic engineer has effective control over only
one of these elements: the roadway
– Traffic engineers can also play the role of informed advocates for
improved driver education and licensing procedures, and for the
required incorporation of safety features in vehicle design
– However, they are subjected to the political and legislative process
and are not under the direct control of the engineer

Slide No. 10
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• One of the basic references in highway safety is the Institute of
Transportation Engineers (ITE) Traffic Safety Toolbox
– Three strategies to improve traffic safety:
1. Exposure control
2. Accident risk control
3. Injury control
– Another reference: Safer Roads: A Guide to Road Safety
Engineering
1. Exposure control
2. Accident prevention
3. Behavior modification
4. Injury control
5. Postinjury management

Slide No. 11
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Exposure control:
– Reduce the number of vehicle-miles of travel by motorists
– Efforts to reduce auto use and travel cover a wide range of
policy, planning, and design issues:
 Diversion of travel to public transportation modes
 Substitution of telecommunications for travel
 Implementation of policies, taxes, and fees to discourage auto
ownership and use
 Reorganization of land uses to minimize travel distances for
various trip purposes
 Driver and vehicle restrictions through licensing and registration
restrictions

Slide No. 12
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Accident risk control/accident prevention:
– Implies actions that reduce the number of accidents that occur for a
given demand level
 Driver and pedestrian training
 Removal of drivers with “bad” driving records
 Provision of better highway designs and control devices
– Includes measures that reduce the severity of an accident when it
occurs
 Design and protection of roadside and median environments

Slide No. 13
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Behavior modification:
– Affecting mode choice is a major behavior modification action
 Providing very high-class and convenient public transportation alternatives
 Involving massive subsidies to keep the cost of public transportation
reasonable, coupled with high parking costs
 Use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes and other restricted-use lanes to
speed public transportation
– Driver and pedestrian training programs
 Many states offer insurance discounts if a basic driving safety course is
completed every three years
– Enforcement can be very effective, but it is also expensive!
 Speed limits will be more closely obeyed if enforcement is strict, and the
fines for violations are expensive
 Use of automated systems for ticketing drivers who violate red lights have
become quite popular
Slide No. 14
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Injury control:
– Focuses on crash survivability of occupants in a vehicular accident
– Vehicle design features including:
> Seat belts and shoulder harnesses, and laws requiring their use
> Child-restraint seats and systems, and laws requiring their use
> Anti-burst door locks
> Padded instrument panels
> Energy-absorbing steering posts and crumple zones
> Side door beams
> Air bags
> Head rests and restraints
> Shatterproof glass
> Forgiving interior fittings

Slide No. 15
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Post injury management:
– Traffic fatalities tend to occur during three critical time periods:
 During the accident occurrence, or within minutes of it (50%)
> Little can be done
 Within one to two hours of the accident occurrence (35%)
> The biggest opportunity for improvement: ensure speedy emergency
medical responses along with high-quality emergency care at the site
and during transport to a hospital facility
> Communications and dispatch systems must be in place to respond
to a variety of needs
> A simple decision on whether to dispatch an ambulance or a
medevac-helicopter is often a life-or-death decision
 Within 30 days of admission to the hospital (15%)
> Difficult to improve in developed countries with high-quality medical
care systems
Slide No. 16
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• Planning actions to implement policy strategies

Slide No. 17
 Approaches to Highway Safety
• National policy initiatives:
– State vehicle-inspection programs and requirements
– National speed limit (eliminated in 1996)
– National 21-year-old drinking age
– Reduction in driving while intoxicated (DWI) requirements
– State driving under the influence (DUI)/DWI programs
– Federal vehicle design standards

Slide No. 18
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)
– Main source of data on all fatal highway accidents for all 50 states
 Primary source of information is police accident reports, which are
filed in the case of a fatal accident
 Descriptions of accidents are provided, and as many as 90 coded
variables are used in the description
• The General Estimates System (GES)
– Including information on all types of highway accidents, fatal,
injury, and property damage only (PDO) accidents
– Uses a sample of police accident reports to estimate national
statistics
 Approximately 45,000 police accident reports each year

Slide No. 19
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• The information is needed for a wide variety of purposes,
including:
1. Identification of locations at which unusually high numbers of
accidents occur
2. Detailed functional evaluations of high-accident locations to
determine contributing causes of accidents
3. Development of general statistical measures of various accident-
related factors
4. Development of procedures that allow the identification of
hazards before large numbers of accidents occur

Slide No. 20
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• Accident Reporting
• Motorists’ accident reports
• Filed by each involved motorist in a traffic accident; for all accidents
with total property damage exceeding a prescribed limit, and for all
accidents involving injuries and fatalities
• Police accident reports
• Filed by an attendant police officer for all accidents at which an
officer is present
• Including all fatal accidents, most accidents involving a serious injury
requiring emergency and/or hospital treatment

Slide No. 21
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• Manual filing systems:
– It is still customary to maintain manual files where written
police accident reports
– Police accident reports sent and stored in three different
locations:
 A copy goes to the state motor vehicle bureau for entry into the
state’s accident data systems
 A copy sent to the central filing location for the municipality or district
in which the accident occurred
 A copy is retained by the officer in his/her district as a reference for
possible court testimony

Slide No. 22
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• Manual filing systems:
– Accident Summary Sheets
 Summary sheets of each
year’s accident records
 All of the year’s
accidents at one location
can be reduced to a
single coded sheet

Slide No. 23
 Accident Data Collection and Record Systems
• Computer record systems
– Every state, large municipalities, counties maintains a
computerized accident record system
– Advantage: being able to maintain a large number of accident
records, keyed to locations
– Common types of statistical reports:
 Numbers of accidents by location, type of accident, type of vehicle,
driver characteristics, time of day, weather conditions, and other
stratifications
 Accident rates by highway location and/or segment, driver
characteristics, highway classification, and other variables
 Correlation of types of accidents versus contributing factors
 Correlation of improvement projects with accident experience

Slide No. 24
 Accident Statistics
– Accident statistics are measures (or estimates) of the number and
severity of accidents
• Types of statistics
1. Accident occurrence: relates to the numbers and types of accidents
that occur, which are often described in terms of rates based on
population or vehicle-miles traveled
2. Accident involvement: concerns the numbers and types of vehicles
and drivers involved in accidents, with population-based rates
3. Accident severity: numbers of fatalities and fatality rates are often
used as a measure of the seriousness of accidents
– Common types of analyses include:
 Trends over time
 Highway geometric elements
 Driver characteristics (gender, age)
 Contributing cause
Slide No. 25
 Environmental conditions
 Accident Statistics
• Accident rates
– Simple statistics citing total numbers of accidents, involvements,
injuries, and/or deaths can be quite misleading because they
ignore the base from which they arise
– An increase in the number of highway fatalities in a specific area
from one year to the next must be matched against population
and vehicle-usage patterns to make any sense
 For this reason, many accident statistics are presented in the form of
rates

Slide No. 26
 Accident Statistics
• Accident rates fall into one of two broad categories:
– Population-based rates including:
> Area population
> Number of registered vehicles
> Number of licensed drivers
> Highway mileage
 They are useful in quantifying overall risk to individuals on a
comparative basis
– Exposure-based rates including:
> Vehicle-miles traveled
> Vehicle-hours traveled
 Measure the amount of travel as a surrogate for the individual’s
exposure to potential accident situations

Slide No. 27
 Accident Statistics
• Accident rates
– Common Bases for Accident and Fatality Rates
 Population-based rates are generally stated according to:
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 100,000 area population
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 10,000 registered vehicles
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 10,000 licensed drivers
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 1,000 miles of highway
 Exposure-based rates are generally stated according to:
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 100,000,000 vehicle-miles
traveled
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 10,000,000 vehicle-hours
traveled
> Fatalities, accidents, or involvements per 1,000,000 entering vehicles
(for intersections only)

Slide No. 28
 Accident Statistics
• Accident rates
– Example in Computing Accident and Fatality Rates
 The following are sample gross accident statistics for a relatively small
urban jurisdiction in 2008:

 In general terms, all rates are computed as:

PDO: Personal Damage Only

Slide No. 29
 Accident Statistics
• Accident rates
– Severity Index
 The number of fatalities per accident
 For the data of the previous example, there were 75 fatalities in a
total of 2,360 accidents
> This yields a severity index of:

Slide No. 30
 Accident Statistics
• Statistical displays and their use
– Declining death rates since 1970s:
 Imposition of a national 55 mph
speed limit
 Improved highway and roadside
design
 Improved vehicle design
– Problem: continuous increase in
vehicle-miles traveled!

Slide No. 31
 Accident Statistics
• Identifying high-accident locations
– Locations with accident rates in the highest 5% of the (normal)
distribution
– In a one-tailed test, the value of z for Prob(z) < 0.95 is 1.645. The
actual value of z for a given accident location is computed as:

– If the value of z must be at least 1.645 for 95% confidence, the

minimum accident rate that would be considered to be significantly
higher than the average may be taken to be:

Slide No. 32
 Accident Statistics
• Identifying high-accident locations
– Example: A major signalized intersection in a small city has an
accident rate of 15.8 per 1,000,000 entering vehicles
– The database for all signalized intersections in the area indicates that
the average accident rate is 12.1 per 1,000,000 entering vehicles, with
a standard deviation of 2.5 per 1,000,000 entering vehicles
 Should this intersection be singled out for study and remediation?

 For a 95% confidence level, the observed accident

rate does not meet the criteria for designation as a
significantly higher accident rate

Slide No. 33
 Accident Statistics
• Identifying high-accident locations

Slide No. 34
 Site Analysis
– Once a location has been statistically identified as a “high-accident”
location, detailed information is required in two principal areas:
1. Occurrence of accidents at the location in question
2. Environmental and physical conditions existing at the location
– Two primary graphical outputs are then prepared:
 Collision diagram
 Condition diagram

Slide No. 35
 Site Analysis
• Collision diagrams
– A schematic
representation of all
accidents occurring at
a given location over a
specified period
– “specified period”
usually ranges from
one to three years

Slide No. 36
 Site Analysis
• Collision diagrams
– The intersection has
experienced primarily
rear-end and right-angle
collisions, with several
injuries but no fatalities
during the study period
– Many of the accidents
appear to be clustered at
night

Slide No. 37
 Site Analysis
• Condition diagrams
– Describes all physical and
environmental conditions
at the accident site
 Include signal locations
and timing, location of all
stop lines and crosswalks,
and even the location of
roadside trees, which
could conceivably affect
visibility of the signals

Slide No. 38
 Site Analysis
• Interpretation of condition and collision diagrams
– For each type of accident, three questions should be asked:
1. What driver actions led to the occurrence of such accidents?
2. What existing conditions at the site could contribute to drivers taking
such actions?
3. What changes can be made to reduce the chances of such actions
taking place?
– Rear-end accidents occur when the lead vehicle stops suddenly or
unexpectedly and/or when the trailing driver follows too closely for the
prevailing speeds and environmental conditions
– The condition diagram shows a number of driveways allowing access to and
egress from the street at or near the intersection itself

Slide No. 39
 Site Analysis
• Interpretation of condition and collision diagrams
– Unexpected movements into or out of these driveways could cause mainline
vehicles to stop suddenly. Because of these driveways, STOP lines are
located well back from the sidewalk line, particularly in the northbound
direction
– Vehicles, therefore, are stopping at positions not normally expected, and
following drivers may be surprised and unable to respond in time to avoid a
collision.
 Potential corrective actions include closing some or all of these driveways
and moving STOP lines closer to their normal positions
– Other potential causes of rear-end actions include signal timing (insufficient
“yellow” and “all red” intervals), signal visibility (do trees block approaching
drivers’ views), and roadway lighting adequacy (given that most of the
accidents occur at night)

Slide No. 40
 Site Analysis
• Interpretation of condition and collision diagrams
– Right-angle collisions indicate a breakdown in the right-of-way assignment by
the signal. Signal visibility must be checked and the signal timing examined
for reasonableness
 Again, insufficient “yellow” and “all red” intervals could release vehicles before
the competing vehicles have had time to clear the intersection
– If the allocation of green is not reasonable, some drivers will “jump” the
green or otherwise disregard it. At this location, some of the causes
compound each other
 The setback of STOP lines to accommodate driveways, for example, lengthens the
requirements for “all red” clearance intervals and, therefore, amplifies the effect
of a shortfall in this factor

Slide No. 41