ACtrafficengr
Civil/Environmental
- Jan 5, 2002
- 1,641
Excuse me while I rant a bit.
It's rare for a traffic study to cover more than trip generation and capacity considerations. If traffic safety is mentioned, it's almost an afterthought.
I get it. The Highway Capacity Manual has been around for decades, and is a mature practice. We're used to the idea of predicting traffic flow performance based on volumes and geometry.
The Highway Safety Manual does the same thing for safety performance. It predicts the crash frequency of a roadway based on volumes and geometry. It's now eight years old. The Interactive Highway Safety Design Model software has been around for fifteen or so. Yet, somehow, these are still afterthoughts at best.
As professionals, if we fail to consider the balance between delay and safety using available tools, are we really doing our jobs? Why is it that a few seconds of delay is important, but people getting hurt isn't?
My glass has a v/c ratio of 0.5
Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris. -
It's rare for a traffic study to cover more than trip generation and capacity considerations. If traffic safety is mentioned, it's almost an afterthought.
I get it. The Highway Capacity Manual has been around for decades, and is a mature practice. We're used to the idea of predicting traffic flow performance based on volumes and geometry.
The Highway Safety Manual does the same thing for safety performance. It predicts the crash frequency of a roadway based on volumes and geometry. It's now eight years old. The Interactive Highway Safety Design Model software has been around for fifteen or so. Yet, somehow, these are still afterthoughts at best.
As professionals, if we fail to consider the balance between delay and safety using available tools, are we really doing our jobs? Why is it that a few seconds of delay is important, but people getting hurt isn't?
My glass has a v/c ratio of 0.5
Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris. -
