• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.1017-1023
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• 2017

Duration induced by freeway crashes has a critical influence on traffic congestion. In general, crash duration composes detection and verification, response, and clearance time. Of these, the crash clearance time determined by a crash clearance team has attracted considerable attention in the freeway congestion management since the interest of the first two time stages faded away with increasing ubiquitous mobile phone users. The objective of this study is to identify the critical factors that affect freeway crash clearance time using a Cox's proportional hazard model. In total, 6,870 crash duration data collected from 30 major Korean freeways in 2013 were used. As a result, it was found that crashes during the night, with trailer or larger size truck, and in tunnel section contribute to increasing clearance time. Crashes associated with fatality, completed damage of crashed vehicle (s), and vehicles' fire or rollover after crash also lead to increasing clearance time. Additionally, an increase in the number of vehicles involved resulted in longer clearance time. On the other hand, crashes in the vicinity of tollgate, by passenger car, during spring, on flat section, and of car-facility type had longer clearance time. On the basis of the results, this paper suggested some strategic plans and mitigation measures to reduce crash clearance time on Korean freeway systems.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.107-116
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• 2002

Crash Cushion is a kind of safety facilities on roadside which acts the role of absorbing impact energy when vehicles are driven out of normal route such as Gore area of freeway off ramp. Criteria for severity index considering accident occurrence possibility are needed to have strong effect on installing the facilities. However, present criteria for establishing crash cushion design do not include such processes. Therefore, the paper presents two kinds of study to develop criteria for severity index. First of all, development of accident forecasting model on freeway off ramp is presented. The module is a relationship between accidents and road environment by negative binomial distribution (NB) which is called to reflect very well quality of accidents at Gore of crash cushion installed freeway Secondly, freeway exiting behavior model is developed because the human factor is the most important one. However, many literatures have shown between road environment and accidents which are more quantitative than human factor. The study supposed advanced process steps on actual freeway and analysed correlation between variables and accidents. The criteria for severity index is presented to determine whether to install or not by benefit cost analysis for each module. The standard for severity index will help to determine whether to install the crash cushion or not and to estimate severity for freeway and off ramp.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.151-159
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• 2010

This paper presents a research result that was performed to develop a more accurate freeway crash prediction model than existing models. While the existing crash models only focus on developing crash relationships associated with highway geometric conditions found on a short section of a crash site, this research applies a different approach considering the upstream highway geometric conditions as well. Theoretically, crashes occur while motorists are in motion, and particularly at freeways vehicle speed at one specific point is very sensitive to upstream geometric conditions. Therefore, this is a reasonable approach. To form the analysis data base, this research gathers the geometric conditions of the West Seaside Freeway 269.3 km and six years crash data ranging 2003-2008 for these freeway sections. As a result, it is found that crashes fit well into Negative Binomial Distribution, and, based on the developed model, total number of crashes is inversely proportional to highway curve length and radius. Contrarily, crash occurrences are proportional to tangent length. This result is different from existing crash study results, and it seems to be resulted from this research assumption that a crash is influenced greatly by upstream geometric conditions. Also, this research provides the expected effects on crash occurrences of the length of downgrade sections, speed camera placements, and the on- and off- ramp presences. It is expected that this research result is useful for doing more reasonable highway designs and safety audit analysis, and applying the same research approach to national roads and other major roads in urban areas is recommended.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.97-105
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• 2011

This paper presents how one can investigate the effects on crash occurrence of freeway geometric design elements including the horizontal, vertical alignment and road environment. At present, the available research results for the most part involve geometric data analysis that are obtained along a relatively long section of freeway, and, because of the long section's diverse geometric conditions, the results tend to miss the specific local geometric impacts on vehicle crashes. In this regard, this research attempts to establish vehicle crash models based on a set of freeway geometric patterns whose crash generating characteristics are identical because they are homogeneous in terms of producing the same vehicle operating speeds, and subsequently their actual relationships are described by providing statistical analysis made in this research. Also each standard is comprised of part of straight, curve and continuous curve. This research has revealed that each type of model has different relation between accident and geometry structure. This research results should be useful for doing more reasonable highway designs and safety audit analysis.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.391-398
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• 2019

In general, truck-involved crashes increase severity in terms of both injury level and crash impact level. Recently, although the frequency and fatality of truck-involved crashes in Korea are rising, their associative studies are very limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify critical factors influencing on injury severity of truck-involved crashes on Korean freeway system. To carry out this objective, this study uses an ordered probit model (OPM) based on a 6-year crash dataset from 2012 to 2017. From the analysis, eight variables were found to have a great effect on injury severity: older driver, crash speed, rear-end collision, number of vehicles involved, drowsy driving, nighttime (0:00 to 6:00) driving, overturn or rollover, and vehicle's fire after crash. However, injury severity was less severe in crashes under snowy condition and crashes to traffic facilities (i.e., crash alone).

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.85-95
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• 2015

PURPOSES : The objective of this study is to analyze factors affecting traffic accident severity for determining countermeasures on freeway climbing lanes. METHODS : In this study, an ordered probit model, which is a widely used discrete choice model for categorizing crash severity, was employed. RESULTS : Results suggest that factors affecting traffic accident severity on climbing lanes include speed, drowsy driving, grade of uphill 3%, gender (male offender and male victim), and cloud weather. CONCLUSIONS : Several countermeasures are proposed for improving traffic safety on freeway climbing lanes based on the analysis of crash severity. More extensive analysis with a larger data set and various modeling techniques are required for generalizing the results.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.199-209
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• 2011

In the study of traffic safety, the analysis on factors affecting crash severity and the understanding about their relationship is important to be planning and execute to improve safety of road and traffic facilities. The purpose of this study is to develop a hierarchical binomial logistic model to identify the significant factors affecting fatal injuries and vehicle damages of traffic crashes on freeway. Two models on death and total vehicle damage are developed. The hierarchical structure of response variable is composed of two level, crash-occupant and crash-vehicle. As a result, we have gotten the crash-level random effect from these hierarchical structure as well as the fixed effect of covariates, namely odds ratio. The crash on the main line and in-out section have greater damage than other facilities. Injuries and vehicle damages are severe in case of traffic violations, centerline invasion and speeding. Also, collision crash and fire occurrence is more severe damaged than other crash types. The surrounding environment of surface conditions by climate and visibility conditions by day and night is a significant factor on crash occurrence. On the orher hand, the geometric condition of road isn't.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.49-56
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• 2011

Understanding various casual factors affecting the occurrence of freeway traffic crash is a backbone of deriving effective countermeasures. The first step toward understanding such factors is to identify crash risks on freeways. Unlike existing studies, this study focused on the unsafe vehicle maneuvering that can be detected by in-vehicle sensors. The recent advancement of sensor technologies allows us to gather and analyze detailed microscopic events leading to crash occurrence such as the abrupt change in acceleration. This study used an accelerometer to capture the unsafe events. A set of candidate variables representing unsafe events were derived from analyzing acceleration data obtained by the accelerometer. Then, the crash risk was modeled by the binary logistic regression technique. The probabilistic outcome of crash risk can be provided by the proposed model. An application of the methodology assessing crash risk was presented, and further research items for the successful field implementation were also discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.95-106
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• 2012

Driver's capability of identifying the change in freeway alignments and environments is one of important factors associated with traffic safety on freeways. In particular, driver's visibility and recognition capability are highly dependent on the altitude of the sun by sunset, sunrise, and nighttime. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of geometric conditions affecting crash occurrences at sunset, sunrise, and nighttime. Poisson and negative binomial regressions were adopted to predict freeway crash frequency in this study. Freeway crash data during 2007~2010 were used for developing the crash frequency models. A set of variables representing the characteristics of geometric conditions were identified as significant ones affecting crash occurrences. The results of this study would be useful in deriving effective countermeasures for preventing traffic crashes that mainly occur at sunset, sunrise, and nighttime on freeways.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.57-70
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• 2012

Variable speed limit(VSL) is a useful speed management tool for alleviating traffic congestion and enhancing traffic safety. The purpose of this study is to identify promising freeway segments for safety enhancement through VSL operations. An ordered probit model was adopted to capture factors affecting freeway crash severity that can be used to support decision making for selecting the promising segments. Pseudo elasticity and marginal effects, which are outcomes of the ordered probit analysis, were used to determine priority of promising segments for traffic safety. The results of this study would be useful in installing VSL systems and developing traffic control and operations strategies in practice.