State Of The Art: Effectiveness Of Rumble Stripes On Highway Safety

Traffic deaths are caused by an array of factors and more than half of these roadways fatalities in the United States are caused by roadway departures. In 2003, there were 25,562 roadway departure fatalities, accounting for 55 percent of all roadway fatalities in the United States. Also in 2003, more than 16,700 people died in run-off-the-road crashes (39 percent of all roadway fatalities), and head-on crashes represented 12 percent of all fatal crashes. In short, roadway departures are a significant and serious problem in the United States. The work presented herein is a part of a project funded by the Mississippi Department of Transportation to determine the safety effectiveness of “Rumble Stripes” in reducing roadway departures in Mississippi. More specifically, this paper presents a series of assessments done nationwide to measure the impact of rumble stripes. The content of this paper will serve as the foundation to establish the method to determine the impact of rumble stripes in Mississippi. This work followed a descriptive research methodology with a systematic literature review. The results presented in this paper could be used as the foundation for similar studies in other states and it has the potential to directly benefit construction education by serving as an example of good practice in engineering education Introduction to Roadway Fatalities The United States (U.S.) heavily relies on the roadway infrastructure. As shown in Table 1 a considerable number of highway vehicle miles are driven every year. Unfortunately, the number of fatalities is staggering with accidents becoming more frequent, resulting in situations as the one depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1. Crash Sample Picture [Public Roads 2004] Every year over 40,000 fatalities occur on U.S. highways (See Table 1) with most of these fatalities due to roadway departures. On average, one roadway departure fatality occurs every 23 minutes, and a roadway departure injury occurs every 43 seconds. It is estimated that the annual cost of roadway departure is $100 billion [FHWA Resource Center 2006] Table 1. Highway Vehicle Miles and Fatalities from 20012004 [DOT 2007a, DOT 2007b] Year Highway Millions Vehicle Miles Highway Fatalities 2001 2,797,287 42,196 2002 2,855,508 43,005 2003 2,890,450 42,643 2004 2,962,513 Not Available The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) indicates that improvements in infrastructure have helped keep the fatalities number from increasing. However, higher traffic volumes have counteracted any real reductions in the number of fatalities due to roadway departure [Public Roads 2005]. These roadway departures are caused by multiple factors. These factors can be categorized into three groups: Environmental, Human and Design. Table 2 shows the three groups with some examples. It is also possible that a combination of these factors cause roadway departures such as: inattentive drivers, poor environmental conditions or poor road designs. Table 2. Factors that Cause Roadway Departure