Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures: Ranking Agencies on Roadway Clearance Time

This study develops a procedure to rank agencies based on their incident responses using roadway clearance times for crashes. This analysis is not intended to grade agencies but to assist in identifying agencies requiring more training or resources for incident management. Previous NCHRP reports discussed usage of different factors including incident severity, roadway characteristics, number of lanes involved and time of incident separately for estimating the performance. However, it does not tell us how to incorporate all the factors at the same time. Thus, this study aims to account for multiple factors to ensure fair comparisons. This study used 149,174 crashes from Iowa that occurred from 2018 to 2021. A Tobit regression model was used to find the effect of different variables on roadway clearance time. Variables that cannot be controlled directly by agencies such as crash severity, roadway type, weather conditions, lighting conditions, etc., were included in the analysis as it helps to reduce bias in the ranking procedure. Then clearance time of each crash is normalized into a base condition using the regression coefficients. The normalization makes the process more efficient as the effect of uncontrollable factors has already been mitigated. Finally, the agencies were ranked by their average normalized roadway clearance time. This ranking process allows agencies to track their performance of previous crashes, can be used in identifying low performing agencies that could use additional resources and training, and can be used to identify high performing agencies to recognize for their efforts and performance.

Evaluation of Driver Behavior in Response to Stop Sign Beacons

Crashes at rural intersections are frequently a result of failure to yield. As a result, agencies attempt to find countermeasures that encourage drivers to stop and yield appropriately. A number of countermeasures have been utilized to reduce crashes and improve intersection safety. However, some treatments have been shown to have mixed results, while for others only limited information about effectiveness is available. Because even low-cost treatments require some maintenance, it is important for agencies to have good information about the effectiveness of the various treatments before investments are made. Stop sign beacons are one such low-cost measure. This paper discusses results of research which evaluated stop sign beacons. Stop sign beacons were installed at 10 stop-controlled approaches in the US state of Iowa. The beacons were set to activate only when an approaching driver was traveling over a set speed threshold which was set based on whether a driver would be able to stop. Video data were collected before, at 1-month, and at 12-month after installation. Type of stop (i.e., rolling, no-stop), stop location in reference to the stop bar, and location of initial brake application were reduced from the video data. The percentage of drivers who began braking before or after 350 feet were compared. This threshold indicates the point at which drivers would need to engage in hard braking based on approach speed and stopping sight distance. At one month, 6 of the 9 intersections experienced an increase in the percentage of vehicles braking at 350 feet or before. At 12-month, drivers at more than half of the approaches were braking sooner than the before period. Results also indicate stopping behavior improved after installation of the beacons. Most of the approaches (70%) showed an increase in the percentage of drivers who came to a full stop at 1-month compared to the period before installation. At 12-month, 71% of approaches showed an increase in drivers who came to a complete stop. Similar results were found for stopping location. Around 80% of approaches experienced an increase in the percentage of vehicle that stopped at or before the stop bar at the 1-month period after installation and 86% of approaches had an increase at 12-month.