How to Save Lives and Increase Mobility on Highways?

• Activity Number: 37 - How to Save Lives and Increase Mobility on Highways?
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 3, 2020 : 10:00 AM to 11:50 AM
• Sponsor: Government Statistics Section
• Author(s): Wei Zhang* and Rachel James* and Raul Avelar* and Kornel Kerenyi*
• Companies: Federal Highway Administration and Federal Highway Administration and Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Federal Highway Administration
• Keywords: highway safety; traffic operations; highway hydraulics; human driver behavior; automated vehicles; big data

Abstract

This session will highlight the importance of transportation systems research targeting safety, mobility, and efficiency of our Nation’s roadways. The presenters are nationally recognized for their researches in hydraulics, traffic operations, and safety. The panelists will present datasets in transportation research including naturalistic driving study, statewide crash, vehicle detection, images of roadside conditions, and aerially collected vehicle trajectories. The presenters will discuss the methods used to mine the datasets for insights in the domains of safety, operations, and hydraulics. Finally, results will be discussed and examples given of how we use the insights gained from analyzing these datasets to solve real world problems in operation, congestion relief, road safety, and mitigating roadway hydroplaning risk, etc. There are many reliable national datasets for transportation systems research, but there is a great need for the transportation community to collaborate with the statistical community to find additional value and insight in these datasets. Thus, the goal of this session is to raise awareness and spur collaborations between these communities.