To assist the Safety Program Track and all Coalition States in making informed and effective safety decisions, as well as in developing safety strategies and programs, this project will review and analyze safety data and existing programs and state plans along the Corridor.  Emerging from this analysis will be the development of proposed initial Corridor-wide safety target issues.

Procurement Agency: Maryland SHA/UMD
Project Contact: Capt. Tom Martin, I-95 Corridor Coalition

To better assist the Coalition States and specifically the I-95CC Safety Program Track in making informed and effective safety activity decisions, the objective of this project is to conduct a review and analysis of safety data along the Corridor, and develop an initial set of proposed safety strategies/Best Practices-Programs to address the top safety issues identified through the data analysis and information gathering process.  

• The Purpose of the Safety Data Analysis project is to identify the primary causes of fatal and serious injury crashes and to provide an inventory of effective traffic safety programs that can be implemented across the I-95 Corridor.
• The objective of the study is to produce a set of best practices for dealing effectively with the major causes of fatal and serious injury crashes that occur on the roads.

View MS Word file of Scope of Project.

Methodology

• To gain a better understanding of the magnitude and characteristics of fatal crashes in the I-95 Corridor Coalition jurisdictions, data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) were analyzed.
• Data from all sixteen I-95 Corridor Coalition states and the District of Columbia for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 were included in the analyses.
• The FARS analyses results are grouped according to five regions: New England (Maine – ME, New Hampshire – NH, Vermont – VT, Massachusetts – MA, Connecticut – CT, Rhode Island – RI), North (New York – NY, New Jersey – NJ, Pennsylvania – PA), Central (Delaware – DE, Maryland – MD, District of Columbia – DC, Virginia – VA), South (North Carolina – NC, South Carolina – SC, Georgia – GA), and Florida (FL).
• Collision data files that contain information on both fatal and serious injury collisions were also obtained from five states (GA, PA, VA, FL, and MA) for the years 2005, 2006, and 2007. It was possible to examine the data from one relatively large state from each of the I-95 regions identified above for the purposes of the FARS analyses. The characteristics of fatal and serious injury collisions were analyzed separately for each of these states.

Data Analysis Results

• The FARS analyses and state collisions data analyses revealed that most fatal and serious injury collisions involved a single vehicle, frontal impact, running off the road and hitting a fixed object.
• Drivers tended to be male, aged 16-34, unbelted, speeding, using no avoidance maneuvers, and under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
• These collisions occurred on one or two lane rural roads that were undivided, many with a curve.
• Collisions most often occurred on weekends, at night with dark lighting conditions.
• There was little variation in terms of fatal crash characteristics across the regions. However, the fatal collisions in Florida were somewhat different than those occurring in other states.
• Based on the results of the crash analyses and the program survey it can be concluded that there are many opportunities for jurisdictions to improve road safety along the I-95 Corridor.

Survey Results

• Based on the above results of the data analyses an international survey was constructed to gauge the types of programs and policies that are being applied in various jurisdictions to address the primary risk factors involved in fatal and serious injury crashes.
• The survey revealed a number of innovative programs inside the I-95 Corridor such as NY’s STOP-DWI and Last Drink Program and FL’s Street Smart program. Similarly, a number of other jurisdictions outside of the Corridor also have implemented interesting and unique initiatives, for example Great Britain’s use of camera enforcement and British Columbia’s transverse rumble strips and colored pavement markings.

Only a few of these programs had been evaluated. It was challenging to access program evaluations in some instances as the evaluation was ongoing, was not publicly available, or was not accessible. Few evaluations have been published in peer reviewed journals and many of the evaluations were process oriented.

Conclusions

Based on the findings from this study, some recommendations for dealing with primary causes of fatal and serious injury crashes are presented in the report.

Project completed.

Original Project Budget: $ 175,000

Amended Project Budget: $ 163,000

Reason for change, if any: Telvent agreed to organize webinar at a cost of $12,000.

Final Project Expenditures: $163,000 Inv (# 8) 10-2668