Xin Chen

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

5-2009

School/College

College of Science, Engineering, and Technology (COSET)

Degree Name

MS in Transportation Planning & Management

First Advisor

Yi Qi

Abstract

Over the past five years, the number of persons killed in motor vehicle crashes in work zones has risen from 989 in 2001 to 1,074 in 2005 (an average of 1,068 fatalities per year) (FHWA, 2007). The severe causalities and property damages caused by work zone related accidents call for new technologies to address this problem. The Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) Initiative is one of the latest initiatives proposed by US Department of Transportation that is expected to address the safety problems at work zones. The concept of VII is to establish vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to roadside communication capability nationwide so that a number of new services that provide significant safety, mobility, and commercial benefits can be implemented (Jones and Resendes, 2004). This research is intended to design a VII technology based system for improving the safety performance of work zones and test the effectiveness of the proposed system 1 2 by driving simulator experiments. The proposed VII based system includes an in-vehicle driver warning subsystem and a real-time Dynamic Message Sign (DMS) subsystem. To test the effectiveness of the proposed work zone collision prevention system, three types of driving simulator testing scenarios are generated. The first type is the baseline scenario with the basic traditional work zone safety control measures. The second type is the comparison "scenario which uses the prevailing work zone control measures. The third type is the study scenario which employs the proposed VII technology based work zone collision prevention systems. After creating these three types of scenarios in a driving simulator environment, the test subjects were recruited and participated in the driving simulator experiments. Qualitative data from surveys and quantitative data from driving tests were both collected for assessing the safety benefits of the proposed VII based work zone collision prevention systems. The results of this research indicate that VII technology has the potential to reduce the safety risks at work zones under certain conditions. The results of this research will be helpful for decision making on the application of VII technology

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