| Summary |
Wei-Sung Huang, 2006.07
Department of Transportation Technology & Management
National Chiao Tung University
Highway-railway level crossing accidents result in enormous loss for railway companies and society, but the budget for upgrading level crossings is limited. Few studies have been undertaken to explore the relationship between the occurrence of level crossing accidents and the highway geometry a well as the types of traffic control, and help the government to understand which level crossings need to be improved first.
This study was conducted to explore the relationship between the occurrence of railway accidents at level crossings and their geometric as well as environmental characteristics. The geometric and environmental characteristics of 469 Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) main line level crossings and 603 level crossing accidents occurred during the period from January 1997 to June 2004 were collected for empirical study purpose. The Poisson and Negative Binomial regression models were then employed respectively to explore the factors which affect the occurrence of level crossing accidents.
The study results indicated that the accident records for Grade 1 Level Crossings were better than those for the Grade 3 Level Crossings. Wider level crossings were found to have less accident frequencies than narrow level crossings do. Level crossings with curve, slope, unsignalized control, and acute intersection angle between railway and highway appeared to have less accident occurrence than their counterpart level crossings This might be the case that drivers would slow down their speed and drive more carefully when they drive through these level railway crossings. Level crossings with T intersections endanger large vehicles from keeping enough space off tracks, but they are safe for motorcyclists because all riders need to decelerate in order to make a turning at the level crossings, which makes motorcyclists to stop their motorbikes more easily as encountering dangerous situations.
As anticipated, some significant factors, that affect the accident risk of railway level crossings, were found in this study. It provides a set of valuable information for TRA to improve the operation safety of their railway level crossings more effectively. |
