Emerging Safety Countermeasures for Wrong-Way Driving Crashes

September 18, 2014

About the Presentation

In Illinois, there were 217 wrong-way crashes on freeways from 2004 to 2009, resulting in 44 deaths and 248 injuries. This presentation reviewed a research project aimed at determining the contributing factors to such wrong-way crashes and developing cost-conscious countermeasures to reduce these driving errors.

The project included collecting six years of crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation, identifying wrong-way crashes, and analyzing general statistical characteristics of the crashes. Findings—which indicated that alcohol impairment, age, gender, physical condition, driver experience and knowledge, time of day, interchange type, and urban and rural areas were significant factors—were also reviewed. In addition, the presentation outlined a new method developed to rank high-frequency crash locations as well as the site-specific and general countermeasures that were identified for future implementation.

Webcast

About the Speaker

Huaguo Hugo Zhou is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Auburn University. He has conducted research on many transportation-related projects, including traffic operations, highway safety, access management, incident management, and computer simulation. Before joining Auburn University, he worked for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as an assistant/associate professor from 2008 to 2013. He is a professional engineer licensed in Florida and a fellow of ITE.