1. Predicting the safety performance associated with highway design decisions: A case study of the Sea to Sky Highway.
- Author
-
Sayed, Tarek and De Leur, Paul
- Subjects
- *
SAFETY , *ACCIDENTS , *ROAD construction , *HEAVY construction - Abstract
An important component of any highway design project is the explicit evaluation of safety, leading to the quantification of the safety impacts resulting from changes in highway design parameters and the safety associated with the level of design consistency. Quantification of these safety impacts supports the design process by allowing decision makers the opportunity to analyse the safety benefits in relation to the cost of the highway improvement. This trade-off analysis allows for the justification of highway infrastructure investment. The ability to accurately quantify safety impacts is achieved by using evaluation tools such as collision prediction models, collision modification factors, and measures of design consistency. Although described and available in the safety engineering literature for years, these tools are now becoming widely accepted, since their use responds to the need to quantify safety. This is in sharp contrast to many traditional highway safety assessments, which often relied solely on expert opinion and often failed to adequately support difficult design decisions. Realizing the value of quantifying the safety impacts associated with design decisions, the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation tested an explicit safety evaluation approach for a new design of a section of the scenic Sea to Sky Highway, located between Vancouver and Whistler, in southern British Columbia, Canada. This paper describes the study, illustrating the benefits of this approach for the design process. The paper also offers some improvement over existing safety evaluation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF