Evaluation of driving performance in relation to safety on an expressway using field driving data

Abstract

Studies on road safety evaluation aim at minimizing the dependence on real crash data by incorporating parameters that often lead to crashes. Many of these studies consider either geometric parameters or surrogate safety measures for safety assessment. Although these parameters represent the safety of a road to a certain extent, it overlooks the driving performance which is a crucial factor that causes crashes. This study proposes a methodology to evaluate the safety of roads using driving performance measures along with geometric parameters derived from field driving data. A crash frequency model is also developed using the parameters thus identified and historic crash data along an expressway. The results show a good correlation between driving performance, road geometry, and crashes.