If you have had the opportunity to follow along on our LinkedIn page, or read transportation trade magazines, or nearly any mainstream publication even, you’ll be aware of the national traffic fatalities epidemic we have on our hands.
Fortunately, the Federal Highway Administration recently published Safe Roads for a Safer Future specifically for state and local governments. This document serves as a roadmap on countermeasures to improve safety and to reduce the increasing number of traffic fatalities involving automobiles, pedestrians, and bicycles. Below are some of these countermeasures to consider.
Enhanced Delineation
This is relatively easy and the safety benefits are clear. There is a 52% reduction in wet road crashes by installing high-friction surface treatment. On curves, the high-friction surface treatments provide a 24% reduction in curve crashes.
Longitudinal rumble strips have been around for quite some time and, as a result, shoulder rumble strips have been found to have a single vehicle runoff fatal and injury crash reduction of 13% to 51%. On the other hand, centerline rumble strips reduce head-on opposite direction and sideswipe fatal and injury crashes between 44% and 64%.
Roadside Improvements
Roadside design improvement at curves is a strategy encompassing several treatments that target the high-risk roadside environment along the outside of horizontal curves. Curve safety is important: 27% of all fatal crashes occur at curves and 80% of all fatal crashes at curves are roadway departure crashes.
Median barriers can reduce fatalities in a dramatic way. When installed on rural four-lane freeways, barriers can reduce cross-median crashes by 97%.
Traffic Signals
Backplates with reflective borders have a safety benefit of potentially having a 15% reduction in total crashes. Backplates added to a traffic signal indication improve the visibility of the illuminated face of the signal by introducing a controlled contrast background.
Access Management
We often speak about access management, and it is the reason that so many transportation departments examine the design, application, and control of entry and exit points along a roadway. Proper corridor access management can reduce total crashes along two-lane rural roads by up to 23% and can have an up to 31% reduction in injury and fatal crashes along urban and suburban arterials.
Turn Lanes
Auxiliary turn lanes—either for left turns or right turns—provide physical separation between turning traffic that is slowing or stopped and adjacent thru traffic at approaches to intersections. The safety benefit of left and right turn lanes is such that there could be a reduction of up to 48% reduction in total crashes for left turn lanes and up to 26% reduction in total crashes for right turn lanes.
Reduced left turn conflict intersections are geometric designs that alter how left turn movements occur in order to simplify decisions and minimize the potential for related crashes. By constructing restricted crossing U-turns (RCUT) or median U-turns (MUT) there could be a 30% to 50% reduction in injury and fatal crashes.
Check out Part 2 of our series, which publishes soon, and will provide further measures to prevent traffic-related deaths.