Assessment of Interaction of Crash Occurrence, Mountainous Freeway Geometry, Real-Time Weather, and Traffic Data

This study investigated the effect of the interaction between roadway geometric features and real-time weather and traffic data on the occurrence of crashes on a mountainous freeway. The Bayesian logistic regression technique was used to link a total of 301 crash occurrences on 1-70 in Colorado with the space mean speed collected in real time from an automatic vehicle identification (AVI) system and real-time weather and roadway geometry data. The results suggested that the inclusion of roadway geometries and real-time weather with data from an AVI system in the context of active traffic management systems was essential, in particular with roadway sections characterized by mountainous terrain and adverse weather. The modeling results showed that the geometric factors were significant in the dry and the snowy seasons and that the likelihood of a crash could double during the snowy season because of the interaction between the pavement condition and steep grades. The 6-min average speed at the crash segment during the 6 to 12 min before the crash and the visibility 1 h before the crash were found to be significant during the dry season, whereas the logarithms of the coefficient of variation in speed at the crash segment during the 6 to 12 min before the crash, the visibility 1 h before the crash, as well as the precipitation 10 mm before the crash were found to be significant during the snowy season. The results from the two models suggest that different active traffic management strategies should be in place during these two distinct seasons.