Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress - About

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Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress accidents occurring in the vicinity of a toll plaza (52 percent) occur at the plaza itself while 37 percent occur upstream of the plaza, and 11 percent occur downstream of the plaza. In terms of the most common crash types, again only a single agency provided this level of detail; for this agency a majority of the crashes were sideswipes (76 percent), with the next most-common crash-type being rear-end collisions (16 percent). While the team examined several trends in the data as just presented, the crash data was not broad enough or consistent enough to allow significant industry-wide conclusions to be drawn or to fully examine trends. Therefore, the findings of this analysis cannot be said to be representative for the Nation’s toll facilities as a whole. 3.3 Study Limitations and Recommendations for Archiving of Data in the Future This section presents both limitations of the data analysis portion of the study as well as suggestions for future data archiving of accidents and injuries at toll plazas. 3.3.1 Study Limitations As a whole, there simply was not enough data available in a consistent format to develop concrete conclusions. While the team examined several trends in the data, the data obtained was not broad enough or consistent enough to allow significant industry-wide conclusions to be drawn or to fully examine trends. Analyses were performed on an agency-by-agency basis for those agencies with strong data collection and archiving, but the findings of these analyses cannot necessarily be said to be representative for the Nation’s toll facilities as a whole. An example of the limitations of the data is that reporting thresholds (i.e., what level of accident or injury severity is reported in their database) varied significantly by agency, so the number of incidents documented varied independent of safety factors or facility characteristics, making it difficult to make comparisons across agencies and facilities to determine contributing factors. A limitation specific to the crash records is that while the fields in the injury records were typically short descriptions providing enough detail to allow for categorization and comparison across agencies, the crash data were primarily defined by discrete variables, and these variables differed from agency to agency. As a result, comparing data across agencies was not desirable as it would have required interpretation of these discrete data fields which could lead to misinterpretation of the results. Another issue with the crash records was that the amount of data provided by each agency for vehicular crashes varied significantly, with one agency providing as few as 15 records and with another providing as many as 5,114 records. As a result, data from only two agencies comprises 88 percent of the vehicular crash records in the database, making it impossible to draw industrywide conclusions. These are just some of the many challenges that the study team faced as a result of the limited electronic data archiving currently in practice across the country. The team recommends that agencies consider more consistent reporting in the future. This is discussed in further detail in the following section. Findings – Characteristics of Accidents and Injuries Occurring at Toll Plazas Page 16
Toll Facility Safety Study Report to Congress 3.3.2 Recommendations for Data Archiving Moving Forward In order to facilitate comparison of data across toll facilities to make industry-wide observations and conclusions in the future, the study team recommends that standardized reporting procedures be implemented for both accident and injury data, and that a centralized database be created and maintained to store and organize this data in a searchable format. This would allow data to be compared across toll facilities to make industry-wide observations and conclusions. The team recommends that OSHA record-keeping requirements and the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC) Guideline be considered in developing any standards. The MMUCC Guideline was developed through a partnership between the Governors Highway Safety Association, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and FHWA in response to a similar challenge. Nationwide analysis of crash data was being hindered due to the lack of uniformity between and within States. The purpose of the MMUCC is to provide a data set for describing motor vehicle crashes that will generate the information necessary to improve highway safety within each State and nationally. The MMUCC is a voluntary and collaborative effort to generate uniform crash data that are accurate, reliable, and credible for data-driven highway safety decisions. 4 For consistency, the study team recommends that standardized crash data reporting procedures for toll facilities, if implemented, should follow the MMUCC guideline. The MMUCC guideline is very extensive and may take time to implement. Therefore, the study team recommends that data collected for a national toll facility crash database for vehicular crashes include the following MMUCC elements as a minimum (MMUCC data references are in parentheses next to each item): Location (C5). Date (C2). Time (C2). Crash type (C8). Weather (C11). Number of vehicles involved (CD2). Type of vehicles involved (V7). Apparent crash cause (C6). Violation committed (P13/P15). Number of injuries / fatalities (CD1/CD3/CD4/CD5/CD6). Annualized Average Daily Traffic (RL6). In addition, in order to perform more detailed analyses of what the possible causes of crashes might be, the geometric and roadway/traffic characteristics (i.e., number of toll lanes, volume, lane widths, sign placement) would be required, and would need to be in an accessible, consistent manner. The FHWA is currently working on an initiative, called the Model Minimum 4 http://www.mmucc.us/ Findings – Characteristics of Accidents and Injuries Occurring at Toll Plazas Page 17
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