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- [Presenter] A quarter of the 38,000 fatal crashes
nationwide occur on curved roadways.
Curves also play a significant role in Texas roadway safety,
with around 22% of fatal crashes
over a seven year period being curve-related.
Even at those numbers, it's possible
that many of these types of crashes
are categorized incorrectly when entered
into the state's Crash Records Information System.
This means that the role of curves in accidents
may be underestimated.
Researchers at the Center for Transportation Research
develop methods for better understanding
curve characteristics and their impact on crash risk
and severity in Texas.
- There are times that we need to sample data
to find ways to improve it,
and that's what this research was trying to do,
is looking for a way to check and then improve
curve-related data
inside the Crash Record Information System.
- The purpose of Project 0-7050
is to develop our automated methodological procedure
that can effectively improve the identification
of curve-related crashes in the CRIS database.
Using curve-related information, the CRIS database,
and the Highway Curves GIS Layer,
curve-related crash misclassifications were categorized
into six types.
Based on the six types of misclassifications,
it was found that 27.1% of the crash were misclassified
in terms of whether they were curve-related or not.
- They developed an automated method to check the data
and they used curve data that was provided by TBP,
which is a new dataset that we've just recently
made available over the last couple years.
And so they went through and they did the comparison.
They took what they had in the crash record system
after understanding the data source.
They took the GIS data that was available
through our GS Online data services
and they compared the two.
- Using the automated procedure that have been developed
under this project will allow TxDOT engineers
to better identify curve-related crashes,
use the portal TxDOT's safety goal of zero fatalities.
- Anytime you look at your data through a different lens
or compare it to something else,
you find things that, you know,
that you can improve and that's what they did.
- [Presenter] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.