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Sustainable road safety : development, transference and application of community-based macro-level collision prediction models

University of British Columbia

The enormous social and economic burden imposed on society by road collision injuries is a major global problem. As a result, it is of ongoing interest of governments to discover ways of reducing this burden. The traditional engineering approach has been to address road safety in reaction to existing collision histories. While this approach has proven to be very successful, road safety authorities are also pursuing more proactive engineering approaches. Rather than working reactively to improve the safety of existing facilities, the proactive engineering approach focuses on improving the safety of planned facilities. Proactive programs rely heavily on reliable empirical techniques, including macro-level collision prediction models (CPMs). The three objectives of this research were to: 1. Develop community-based macro-level CPMs for the Capital Regional District (CRD) in BC, Canada and the City of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. 2. Perform a road safety evaluation of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) recently promoted Fused Grid model for sustainable subdivision development. 3. Use these models to conduct a Black Spot analysis of each region. Results were in line with intuitive expectations of each objective. First, following the recommended development and transferability guidelines, 64 community-based macro-level CPMs were successfully developed for the CRD and City of Ottawa. These models can be used by community planners and engineers as a decision-support tool in proactive road safety improvement programs. Second, the safety level of five road network patterns was evaluated using these macro-level CPMs. It was concluded that the 3-way offset and Fused Grid road networks were the safest over all, followed by the cul-de-sac and Dutch SRS road networks. The grid network was the least safe road pattern. Finally, black spot studies were also conducted, and four black spots were selected for in-depth analysis on diagnosing safety problems, and evaluating possible remedies. The results of this research demonstrate the potential of community-based, macro-level CPMs as new empirical tools for road safety planners and engineers to conduct proactive analyses, promote more sustainable development patterns, and reduce the road collision burden on communities worldwide.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-06-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9312

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/