Operational impacts of incident quick clearance legislation: a simulation analysis |
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| Authors: | Ryan Fries Carol Hamlin Mashrur Chowdhury Yongchang Ma Kaan Ozbay |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Civil Engineering, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Box 1800, Edwardsville, IL 62026, U.S.A.;2. Woolpert, Suite 101, 415 Port Centre Parkway, Portsmouth VA, 23704, U.S.A.;3. Department of Civil Engineering, Clemson University, 131 Lowry Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A.;4. IEM, Inc. 3131 RDU Center, Suite 120, Morrisville, NC 27560, U.S.A.;5. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers University, 632 Bowser Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854‐8014, U.S.A. |
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| Abstract: | Many states in the US have enacted quick clearance laws requiring drivers of vehicles involved in minor incidents to move their vehicles from travel lanes prior to the arrival of first responders. Since little is known about the effectiveness of these laws, this research sought to find the benefit–cost ratio of advertising quick clearance legislation to improve driver compliance, and compare it with benefit–cost ratios of other incident management strategies, particularly traffic cameras, freeway service patrols, and traffic sensors. The analysis used traffic simulation that applied application programming interfaces to produce random spatial and temporal occurrence of incidents, including incident start times, durations, and locations, based on normal distributions developed from field data, to test before and after the law scenarios. The results provide decision makers with support for prioritizing funding between these incident management strategies and indicated that investments in the advertisement of this law was beneficial. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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