GIS Potential in Management of Pedestrian Accidents in Developing Countries

The main objective of this work was to investigate the potential of utilizing geographic information systems (GISs) in identifying hazardous pedestrian accident-prone locations. The study was performed for roads in Irbid city-Jordan for the years 2002 and 2003. Pedestrian accident data was analyzed by pedestrian characteristics, driver characteristics, accident time and location, environmental conditions, vehicle speed and characteristics, and accident severity. Pedestrian accidents were correlated to operational factors, including traffic volume, vehicle speed, pedestrian volume, street length, and access points. Hazardous locations of vehicle-pedestrian accidents were identified using a GIS query builder. Results showed that there was a high potential for GISs in studying pedestrian accidents

INFLUENCE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS ON CRASHES IN RURAL SOUTH CAROLINA AT SUB-COUNTY LEVEL

State of South Carolina ranks high in the fatality rates. The state is a predominately a rural state with more percentage of rural roads. This research focuses on the statistical variation of crash rates between the county and block-group, especially rural once to the state. Also, it focuses on the possibility of various socio-economic and demographic characters influence on the high crash rates particularly in rural South Carolina. Crash database for the year 2004 was acquired from South Carolina Department of Transportation and was processed by the research team at Clemson University. This processed database was imported into GIS. Spatial analysis is used to aggregate crash data to rural census block groups. Crash rates are developed in terms of the number of injury and fatal crashes per 1000 persons of driver age for each block group in South Carolina. A sample of block groups, with high crash incidences was identified. These unusually high incidence block groups are further investigated to identify potential causal factors that may be related to the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the areas. Fatal and injury crashes, jointly termed as severe crashes were considered for the detailed analysis. Also all the crashes occurring on the Interstate highways were filtered out. Field investigations of the select block groups were also undertaken to ascertain the characteristics of the roadway system. Based on the analysis, conclusions were drawn that rural areas of are of greatest concern when it comes to highway crashes. The results indicate that, there is significant variation in crash rates for individual rural block-groups and the entire state. Young driver age population was observed as one of the main factor in influencing high severe crashes rate. From the traffic perspective, transition areas into rural towns and rural cities were some of the most dangerous locations in the state. Based of the present analysis, recommendations are made which might help the further studies to run a more efficient analysis and also draw firm conclusions

Spatial Factors Affecting the Frequency of Pedestrian Traffic Crashes: A Systematic Review

Context: Considering the importance of pedestrian traffic crashes and the role of environmental factors in the frequency of crashes, this paper aimed to review the published evidence and synthesize the results of related studies for the associations between environmental factors and distribution of pedestrian-vehicular traffic crashes. Evidence Acquisition: We searched all epidemiological studies from 1966 to 2015 in electronic databases. We found 2,828 studies. Only 15 observational studies out of these studies met the inclusion criteria of the study. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) checklist. Results: A review of the studies showed significant correlations between a large number of spatial variables including student population and the number of schools, population density, traffic volume, roadway density, socio-economic status, number of intersections, and the pedestrian volume and the dependent variable of the frequency of pedestrian traffic crashes. In the studies, some spatial factors that play an important role in determining the frequency of pedestrian traffic crashes, such as facilities for increasing the pedestrians’ safety were ignored. Conclusions: It is proposed that the needed research be conducted at national and regional levels in coordination and cooperation with international organizations active in the field of traffic crashes in various parts of the world, especially in Asian, African and Latin American developing countries, where a greater proportion of pedestrian traffic crashes occur

Identification of high risk pedestrian locations

In order to identify appropriate countermeasures to improve pedestrian safety, it is necessary to identify those locations which pose high risks. The objective of this thesis is to develop criteria to identify high risk locations for pedestrian safety on roadway networks. These high risk locations were identified based on analyses of crash data. The crash locations were ranked based on several factors such as crash severity, age group, characteristics of pedestrians involved in crashes, and indicators of traffic and pedestrian exposure. Criteria were developed such that different weights were given for age groups of pedestrians involved in the crashes, and for traffic volume. These developed criteria are to assist transportation system managers to better understand the causes of crashes and to identify appropriate design and operating strategies to enhance pedestrian safety. Crash data from Clark County, Nevada, were used to develop and to validate the proposed methods to identify high risk pedestrian locations. The results showed that the top 10 high risk locations remained almost the same irrespective of the method used to rank the locations, which is indicative of the robustness of the methods

Development of a GIS-based safety analysis system

The objective of this study is to develop a safety analysis system that integrates crash data and roadway related information. This system is developed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. It includes customized user interfaces to support queries to analyze data and to display results either in graphical or tabular formats. The system also affords the capabilities to export such results. The system permits analyses to be performed either at individual locations such as intersections, or for roadway segments. These analyses are based on data fields included in the crash database. The queries may be based on individual attributes recorded in the crash database or by combining multiple attributes from the database. The system also contains a module to identify high crash locations based on methods identified from the published literature. The methods range from those based on simple crash frequency to more complex methods which incorporate different weights for crashed based on the crash outcomes. An application of the system is illustrated using data from the Las Vegas metropolitan are in the state of Nevada; The system can be used to identify safety issues in a region, and to plan and deploy appropriate countermeasures to enhance safety. It also can be used to monitor the effectiveness of traffic safety programs. Such a system could also be used to screen projects and operational strategies to be funded in through appropriate funding processes

Development of a safety analysis and an intersection infrastructure system

GIS and GPS technologies have found immense applications in the field of transportation engineering. Different features related to transportation safety are inventoried using these technologies. The databases so created serve as main source for safety analyses, decision making and reporting. Many different analyses tools are available to assist engineers, planners and policy makers in the process of improving transportation safety. GIS-based analyses tools provide tabular and graphic display, thereby expediting the analyses process and improving the spatial understanDing The advantages of such tools increase if they can be provided on the World Wide Web. One such software system that offers online analyses tool is the ArcIMS; This research is aimed at developing a GIS-based tool to inventory signalized intersection attributes. In addition, an internet based analyses system that utilizes the signalized intersection database and the crash database is developed. The tools provide number of choices to perform user-defined queries to generate specific results. The system is developed using Visual Basic .Net programming language. The applications developed here are demonstrated with the data available for the Las Vegas metropolitan area

Improved Methods for Network Screening and Countermeasure Selection for Highway Improvements

Network screening and countermeasure selection are two crucial steps in the highway improvement process. In network screening, potential improvement locations are ranked and prioritized based on a specific method with a set of criteria. The most common practice by transportation agencies has been to use a simple scoring method, which, in general, weighs and scores each criterion and then ranks the locations based on their relative overall scoring. The method does not deal well with criteria that are qualitative in nature, nor does it account for the impacts of correlation among the criteria. The introduction of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) provides agencies with a method to include both quantitative and qualitative criteria. However, it does not address the issue on correlation. This dissertation explores the use of both Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) for their potential capabilities to address both issues. Using urban four-lane divided highways in Florida for bicycle safety improvements, both ANP and FANP were shown to provide more reasonable rankings than AHP, with FANP providing the best results among the methods. After the locations are ranked and prioritized for improvements, the next step is to evaluate the potential countermeasures for improvements at the selected top-ranked locations. In this step, the standard practice has been to use Crash Modification Factors (CMFs) to quantify the potential impacts from implementing specific countermeasures. In this research, CMFs for bicycle crashes on urban facilities in Florida were developed using the Generalized Linear Model approach with a Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) distribution. The CMFs were tested for their spatial and temporal transferability and the results show only limited transferability both spatially and temporally. The CMFs show that, in general, wider lanes, lower speed limits, and presence of vegetation in the median reduce bicycle crashes, while presence of sidewalk and sidewalk barrier increase bicycle crashes. The research further considered bicycle exposure using the bicycle activity data from the Strava smartphone application. It was found that increased bicycle activity reduces bicycle crash probabilities on segments but increases bicycle crash probabilities at signalized intersections. Also, presence of bus stops and use of permissive signal phasing at intersections were found to increase bicycle crash probabilities

South Carolina Pole Related crashes - A qualitative and quantitative study

South Carolina has its share of motor vehicle crashes. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for 2007, South Carolina was 4th in nation for rate of motor vehicle crash deaths per 100,000 people. Within South Carolina, run off road fixed object crashes account for 48\% of fatal crashes whereas these types of crashes count for only 21\% of fatal crashes nationally. Utility poles are only second to trees in fixed objects struck but they are intentionally placed mad made obstructions. This makes utility poles one of the most serious problems alongside South Carolina roadways. Over 5\% of the pole-related fixed object fatal crashes in the nation occurred in SC, yet we only represent just over 1\% of the licensed population in the US. This research aims to qualitatively and quantitatively assess pole related crashes in South Carolina, develop a guiding document to aid in identifying problematic utility pole crash sites within South Carolina, and suggest suitable improvement countermeasure to increase safety of the serving demographic. SCDOT crash database for 2004, 2005 and 2006 were used to calculate different descriptive statistics for influencing factors related to pole crashes. Roadside slopes and obstacles were analysed using laser data from a prior study of run-off-road crashes in South Carolina. The analysis revealed that the most influential factors in pole crashes were lack of proper light conditions, no use of restraining devices, speeding, probable causes like driver inattentiveness, driving under influence(DUI) and urban roads. Young male drivers below the age of 35 years were the most affected driver group. Relocating poles further away of the traveled way effectively reduces the number of crashes. Clear zone analysis revealed that lack of minimum clear zone is a major factor in utility pole related crashes. The most effective treatment for improving roadside safety include placing utilities underground (the most expensive option) and relocating poles beyond the clear zone requirement. After looking at the benefit/cost analysis of several sites, most sites with ADT over 4,000 veh/day returned B/C ratio of 1.5 or better for relocation. Due to the cost of placing utilities underground, this option rarely produced gains for the study period