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- [Narrator] Severe weather can happen quickly in Texas,
making wet weather crashes a concern statewide.
It highlights a need for pavements
with adequate skid resistance during these conditions.
The Center for Transportation Research
and the Texas Department of Transportation
look to enhance the current methods of measuring resistance
with the goal of improving safety for all drivers.
- A few years back, Federal Highway reported
that about 16% of all crashes
happen during wet weather conditions,
while 13% of all crash fatalities
happen during wet weather conditions.
So that highlights how important this problem is
and how important is for State DOTs
to have a proper friction management plan.
- So, we had a preliminary sample data
from the previous research project that shows promising,
like correlation between the measurement
to the skid numbers.
And with this implementation project,
the research team was able to collect more data
on different pavement type,
on the different surface characteristics,
different mix type, and different age of the pavement,
so they can develop more comprehensive model
of those relationships.
- In the US, most State DOTs use the so-called
locked wheel trailer to measure friction.
The point with this system, while it's very effective,
because it measures friction very well,
is very inefficient because it needs large amount of water.
So what we did during this project,
we developed a high-definition, high-speed laser scanner
that allows us to scan the surface of the pavement
at highway speed and produce very high-definition profile
of the pavements.
- The research team spend a lot of effort
to collecting more data,
which covers different geographic region,
different surface type, different age, different mix types.
And then once the data collected
and going back to the office,
pulling those data together
using AI and machine learning
to develop the models.
- The advantage of this, of what is the impact of this
is, now, by having full coverage every year,
TxDOT can spot these so-called hotspots,
which are sections of low texture,
which are the ones that have potential
for wet weather crashes,
and then they can fix it immediately
and reduce the potential number of crashes
in a significant manner.
- The safety is the number one priority for TxDOT,
and this research project and develop a model,
which correlate texture to the skid numbers,
that closed the gap for us to be able to identify
the hotspot which potentially showing low skid resistance.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.