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Wrong-way crashes on limited access highways continue to be a serious problem for state highway agencies and communities. These crashes are more likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries than other traffic incidents, due to vehicles travelling at high speeds, often involved on a roadway with limited vertical space and time to avoid a crash. This research study focused on wrong-way crashes that occurred on highways in the State of Kansas. Although these crashes represent a very small portion of crashes, wrong-way crashes were found to have a higher rate of fatalities and injuries as compared to other crash types. Using ten years of crash data, it was found that a typical wrong-way crash occurred under no adverse weather conditions, at a non-intersection location, in daylight or with streetlights present, involved alcohol or drugs, and resulted in a fatality or serious injury. An ordinary logistic model was developed to identify significant characteristics of wrong-way crashes. The model indicated that drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs was found to be a significant in both fatal and injury wrong-way crashes. It was also found that certain lighting conditions were also significant, along with use of safety equipment and drivers over the age of 55 years old. Additional research is needed to further investigate wrong-way crashes and their causalities in Kansas on other roadway facilities including rural at-grade divided intersections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle speed and lane position are two of the many possible factors that lead to crashes on horizontal curves. Vehicle position and speed through horizontal curves are of great relevance to many areas of traffic engineering, including countermeasure design, design consistency, and policy. This article discusses the results of an exploratory analysis of vehicle trajectories and speed profiles at two horizontal curves located in central Iowa. The sites include an urban and rural curve. Data were collected at five stations within the horizontal curves in both directions of travel using pneumatic road tubes set up in a Z-configuration. Overall, vehicles were found to cut the horizontal curve in the inside and outside travel lanes. However, the trajectories were seen to be different at the two curve sites. Vehicle mean speed profiles indicated that the curve site selected for evaluation operate differently and are reflected in the speed profiles. Speed deviations of individual vehicles as they traversed the curve were evaluated. More vehicles were found to adjust their speeds and lateral position in the vicinity of the center of the curve, and then at the end of the horizontal curve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Horizontal curves present drivers with numerous tasks that, if not performed while approaching and negotiating the curve, may result in a roadway departure crash. A vehicle's lateral position within the lane and its speed are two indicators of interest from safety and operational perspectives. These can and have been measured simultaneously at multiple locations along the curve. However, researchers face the challenge of collecting operational data while minimizing impacts on driver behavior, and developing robust, efficient, and accurate means to obtain the data. This paper presents the findings of a series of pilot studies on closed and open courses that investigated the effectiveness and accuracy of pneumatic road tubes and digital video cameras for collecting such data. Closed-course studies investigated a single data collection station setup, whereas an open-course study investigated multiple data collection stations on a horizontal curve. The data were reduced manually and automatically, and tests were performed to evaluate the statistical significance of the results. In general, the pilot studies show that pneumatic road tubes provide a higher level of accuracy than video data. Other findings include that drivers moved towards the centerline of the roadway overall and even more so when the presence of video equipment. It was also found that vehicle mean speeds at the center of the curve were lower with an increase amount of data site-based vehicle data collection equipment present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Red light running causes more than 100,000 crashes and 1,000 fatalities annually and results in an estimated economic loss of over $14 billion per year in the United States. Red light running is a significant safety issue facing communities which rarely have the resources to place additional law enforcement in the field. As a result, communities are increasingly turning to automated red light running camera-enforcement systems to address the problem. The effectiveness of red light running cameras in reducing the number of drivers who run the red light (violations) in an Iowa community was evaluated. The number of red light running violations at camera-enforced intersection approaches were compared to violations at approaches at intersections where cameras were not used within the same metropolitan area using a cross-sectional analysis. A Poisson lognormal regression was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the cameras in reducing violations. Results indicated that red light running cameras substantially reduced the number of violations at camera-enforced approaches as compared to control approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]