Introduction: Highway-rail at-grade crossings (HRGCs) are critical locations where a railway and a roadway intersect with one another. Crashes at those locations often result in fatalities and economic and social damages due to the impacts on both road and rail users. The main purpose of countermeasures at HRGCs is to permit safe and efficient rail and highway operations. Method: Countermeasures at highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) considered in this study include all traffic control devices and other warning and barrier devices at or on approaches to crossings. In general, active devices are commonly accepted as more effective countermeasures than passive devices. However, many of the previous effectiveness studies are either at the project level or were conducted without considering the before-improvement condition. This study focuses on the network-level marginal effectiveness of countermeasures on crash rate and severity levels during the 29-year study period from 1990 to 2018 by fully considering before-improvement control levels. A competing risk model (CRM) is able to accommodate the competing nature of crash severities as multiple outcomes from the same event of interest, which is crash occurrence in this study. Subsequently, CRM is used in this study as an integrated one-step estimation approach that investigates both crash frequency and severity likelihood over time. Results: The study findings indicate that adding audible devices to crossings already equipped with gates will result in a considerable annual decline in crash occurrence likelihood (0.25%). The same device installed at crossings already controlled by gates and flashing lights results in less reduction in crash occurrence likelihood of 0.14%. Moreover, adding a stop sign to the active crossing controls of gates, standard flashing lights, and audible devices will lead to a decrease in the probability of crash occurrence and severe crashes (injury and fatal). However, adding stop signs to crossings equipped only with crossbucks will increase the crash occurrence. 相似文献
Objective: Currently, in Turkey, fault rates in traffic accidents are determined according to the initiative of accident experts (no speed analyses of vehicles just considering accident type) and there are no specific quantitative instructions on fault rates related to procession of accidents which just represents the type of collision (side impact, head to head, rear end, etc.) in No. 2918 Turkish Highway Traffic Act (THTA 1983). The aim of this study is to introduce a scientific and systematic approach for determination of fault rates in most frequent property damage–only (PDO) traffic accidents in Turkey.
Methods: In this study, data (police reports, skid marks, deformation, crush depth, etc.) collected from the most frequent and controversial accident types (4 sample vehicle–vehicle scenarios) that consist of PDO were inserted into a reconstruction software called vCrash. Sample real-world scenarios were simulated on the software to generate different vehicle deformations that also correspond to energy-equivalent speed data just before the crash. These values were used to train a multilayer feedforward artificial neural network (MFANN), function fitting neural network (FITNET, a specialized version of MFANN), and generalized regression neural network (GRNN) models within 10-fold cross-validation to predict fault rates without using software. The performance of the artificial neural network (ANN) prediction models was evaluated using mean square error (MSE) and multiple correlation coefficient (R).
Results: It was shown that the MFANN model performed better for predicting fault rates (i.e., lower MSE and higher R) than FITNET and GRNN models for accident scenarios 1, 2, and 3, whereas FITNET performed the best for scenario 4. The FITNET model showed the second best results for prediction for the first 3 scenarios. Because there is no training phase in GRNN, the GRNN model produced results much faster than MFANN and FITNET models. However, the GRNN model had the worst prediction results. The R values for prediction of fault rates were close to 1 for all folds and scenarios.
Conclusions: This study focuses on exhibiting new aspects and scientific approaches for determining fault rates of involvement in most frequent PDO accidents occurring in Turkey by discussing some deficiencies in THTA and without regard to initiative and/or experience of experts. This study yields judicious decisions to be made especially on forensic investigations and events involving insurance companies. Referring to this approach, injury/fatal and/or pedestrian-related accidents may be analyzed as future work by developing new scientific models. 相似文献