(soft music)
- [Narrator] Texas saw over 3,500 fatal accidents
and nearly 17,000 serious injury crashes in 2015.
This combined with the state's growing population
highlighted a need to address highway safety.
The Texas Department of Transportation
and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
investigated ways to evaluate
and enhance the use of traffic control devices
with a goal of improving roadway communication
and reducing crashes while enhancing the flow of traffic.
- This research project is actually a continuation
of several similar projects we've had over the years
where we can help Tex DOT
with short-term research issues,
dealing with traffic control devices.
They requested to experiment
with driveway assistance devices in work zones.
DADs are devices that allow someone coming in from, say,
a residential driveway
to understand which way they can turn on a two lane road
when one of those lanes is closed.
- What it does is when you have a
two lane roadway with one way traffic control,
with temporary traffic signals on each end,
how do you control all the driveways?
How do they know when they can go and when they can't go?
- And so these devices have different displays
and signs on them, and that's what we're trying to answer.
We're trying to help Tex DOT figure out what's the best
displays that are easily understood by the motorists,
what signage may be needed with those displays
to explain when they need to stop,
when they need to turn right
and when they need to turn left.
- TTI sends people out to the field.
They set up cameras to observe the drivers on how they're
observing the indications.
The flashing yellow, the flashing red.
On flashing yellow, they can turn in that direction,
on red, they're not supposed to go in that direction.
So it is been observing the drivers as to
what they're supposed to do
and recording that information all out in the field.
- We're in the field looking at pavement markings,
looking at signs, being in work zones,
evaluating actual motorist responses to the devices,
as well as obtaining Tex DOT
and contractor opinions of the devices.
- As I've learned, you know, there's other projects that
where you're doing full depth repair,
you're not planning,
you don't want to plan to open up.
So you need to have a tool like these driveway assistance
devices that can allow you to
perform that traffic control, only having one lane open,
but giving the residents along the way,
know which way they can travel safely.
The the key thing about this is that it is a device that
gives information to the drivers
of what's a safe way they can travel.
So we're moving forward towards having something
that FHWA will approve.
- We have currently have eight
or nine tasks that we're working on this year,
also helping Tex DOT with items, dealing with signs,
payment markings, devices, and work zones.
We continue to see our findings
implemented quickly in the field, and so you probably,
as you're driving down the road today, have seen something
that we have implemented as a result of this project.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the Tex DOT Research Library
at the link shown below.