Safety Performance for Freeway Weaving Segments
Yi Qi, Jie Liu and Yubain Wang, September, 2014
The intensive lane change maneuvers at weaving sections often result in safety and operational problems. Various factors, including the design of ramp roadways, use of auxiliary lanes, and continuity of lanes will have significant effects on the level of service and safety performance of the weaving sections. This study investigated the safety performance of freeway weaving sections and developed a quantitative model for predicting the safety impacts of different types of geometric treatments for freeway weaving sections. The results of this study show that weaving sections with longer length will have lower crash frequency per 1000 ft., more required lane changes for diverge vehicles will result in more crashes in the freeway weaving section, increasing merge traffic in the weaving sections will slightly reduce the crash risk at this section, and increasing diverge traffic in the weaving sections will increase the crash risk at this section. In this study, Crash Modification Factors (CMFs) were also developed based on the developed crash prediction model for estimating the impacts of different safety treatments for the freeway weaving sections.
Keywords: Freeway Weaving Section, Poisson Regression Model, Safety Performance, Crash Modification Factors (CMFs)
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