Cuckson, Christopher (2016) Effectiveness of the Wide Centreline Treatment on two-way rural roads. [USQ Project]
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Abstract
An astonishing 60% of fatal road crashes in Australia occur on rural roads (Austroads 2006). This percentage is highly disproportiante considering the population distribution of urban to rural areas. Measures are needed to reduce the incidences of high severity crashes on rural roads.
The Wide Centreline Treatment (WCLT) is one type of road safety treatment aimed at reducing the incidences of severe head-on and run-off-road type accidents on rural roads. The intrinsic benefit of the WCLT is in combining the elements of separating opposing traffic streams and audio tactile awareness.
In 2011 DTMR implemented the WCLT on a section of the Bruce Highway in south east Queensland that had high frequency incidences of fatal head-on crashes. In 2012 research was conducted to determine the effectiveness of this treatment. The limited amount of post-WCLT crash data available yielded preliminary crash reduction percentages of approximately 60% (Whittaker 2012).
Literature surrounding before and after studies suggests using multiple years of crash data to provide greater accuracy in treatment effectiveness calculations. This justifies the need to conduct a follow up analysis on the Bruce Highway WCLT to extend on the existing knowledge produced by the initial research.
A before and after study using the Empirical Bayes method was used to conduct this follow up study analysis, different roads have also been analysed as part of this research. This method provides improved accuracy over simpler methods, correctly accounting for changes in traffic volume and removing the regression to the mean bias.
This research quantifies the WCLT treatment effectiveness by using an analytical study. Using additional years of crash data in this analysis has shown that the WCLT offers reduced crash reduction percentages of around 25%, the results are discussed thoroughly in chapter 5. These results further build on the existing knowledge of the WCLT, its effectiveness of
reducing high severity accidents and the role these types of treatments may play in the future of road safety.
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| Item Type: | USQ Project |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) Major Civil Engineering project |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Civil Engineering and Surveying (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Somasundaraswaran, Soma |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2017 01:14 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Jul 2017 01:14 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | road crashes; two-way roads; Wide Centreline Treatment (WCLT); crash reduction; road safety |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 09 Engineering > 0905 Civil Engineering > 090502 Construction Engineering |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 40 ENGINEERING > 4005 Civil engineering > 400504 Construction engineering |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/31390 |
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