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- [Presenter] Research shows that speeding and weather
are often factors in crashes on rural roadways.
A recent project conducted
by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
has closely analyzed current crash prediction methods,
and the data that supports them.
From the recommended model enhancements,
researchers developed an interactive,
real time web-based tool
to be used for safety prediction
and improvements on these rural roadways.
- A lot of the situations that we as safety engineers
around the state, within the district,
we have a lot of tools
that we use to look at particular sections of roadway
or particular areas on a network
that need to be identified
for additional safety improvements.
- We have the Highway Safety Manual
and Texas based model that does not have operational measure
such as speed and weather information in the model.
So this particular project we added
this two variable in the model.
And also we developed a Decision-Support Tool
that provide us information on the rix areas
so that duty can take care.
- This tool is kind of like a dashboard
or network screening to give us an idea
using those two variables of where to look at
places to identify additional safety needs.
It developed an interactive tool that is really easy to use,
user friendly, it's web-based
so you don't need additional software,
and it's going to be tremendously beneficial
just in that aspect alone.
- And it helps to check down the area where need more kind
of improvement and where we need to take care of it.
So for example, if we take a look at the tool
it has several dropdown panels
and we can select districts, we can select a county
from a district and we can also select the facility type.
And from there we can select
whether which type of crash we are interested,
either we are interested in the total crash or maybe severe
and federal crashes or knowing duty or PDO crashes.
So when we select everything and then refresh the map
then it will generate an interactive map
in the heat map format.
And also it will produce the precise dataset
associated with it so that we can also download the data.
- So couple of the next steps
are to incorporate the most current data,
real time data, weather, speeds, crash data,
volumes and all of that that is used.
And then the next step would be rolling it out to districts
and providing them the ability to get on this tool
and use it, give them a little bit of assistance
if they need it.
It's really user friendly,
but be there to support them in that,
in the use of this tool.
And then lastly, our goal would be to get a similar tool
to be used for urban facilities in the State of Texas.
- For more information, and to find the publications
for this project, please visit the tex.researchlibrary
at the link shown below.