Safety evaluation of roundabouts at freeway ramp terminals and Highway Safety Manual calibration

Although the conventional understanding is that roundabouts have the potential to improve safety at intersections, particularly by reducing more severe crash types, there is limited knowledge on their safety impacts when utilized as part of an interchange system. This research utilizes multiple years of crash, traffic, and geometric data across a variety of roundabout interchange sites in Missouri to develop a two-level Empirical Bayes (EB) safety analysis at the project (entire interchange) and site-specific (ramp terminal only) levels. The results were then aggregated for both single-lane and dual-lane roundabout terminals. The project-level results for single-lane sites showed a decrease in fatal/injury crashes (FI) by 20.3 percent, property damage only (PDO) crashes by 26.0 percent and total crashes by 24.5 percent. The site-specific results for single-lane roundabout terminals indicated a reduction of FI crashes by 32.8 percent, PDO crashes by 23.1 percent, and total crashes by 24.4 percent. At the project-level, dual-lane roundabouts were shown to reduce FI crashes by 2.3 percent while increasing PDO and total crashes by 16.9 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively. The dual-lane site-specific results indicated an increase in FI crashes by 34.7 percent, PDO crashes by 53.9 percent, and total crashes by 50.0 percent at the ramp terminal specifically. This analysis directly compares observed crash data after roundabout implementation to the expected number of crashes over that time period if the roundabout were never constructed. Therefore, this indicates that single-lane roundabouts performed significantly better than their original configurations, while the dual-lane roundabout terminals were shown to be less-suitable for certain applications. Additionally, it was found that a high proportion of the roundabout crashes occurred at the exit ramp approach legs; this was illustrated in the collision diagrams and crash type distributions that were produced for the common observed crashes at both single and dual-lane roundabout terminals. As a separate part of this thesis research, an improved calibration of the Highway Safety Manual safety performance functions of four facility types was performed using data from 2012-2014 to calibrate for local Missouri conditions. Crash severity and crash type distributions were also developed for each facility type.Dr. Carlos Sun, Thesis Supervisor.Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-172)