Accidents on Rural Interstate and Parkway Roads and Their Relation to Pavement Friction

Abstract

Friction measurements were made with a skid trailer at 70 mph on 820 miles of rural, four-lane, controlled-access routes on the interstate and parkway systems in Kentucky. These facilities were subdivided into test sections and half-mile sites. Accident experience, friction measurements and traffic volumes were obtained for each subdivision. The expression of accident occurrence which correlated best with skid resistance was wet-surface accidents per 100 million vehicle miles. There was a definite trend exhibiting a rapid decrease of accidents with increasing Skid Number (70 mph) to 26 ± 1; thereafter, with increasing Skid Numbers, the rate of decrease was considerably lessened. This trend was developed using test-section data and verified using half-mile sites. Analysis of Peak Slip Numbers and accident occurrences indicated similar trends to those developed with Skid Numbers

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