Development of Procedures for Identifying High-Crash Locations and Prioritizing Safety Improvements

The objectives of this study were to review and analyze the current procedures for identifying high-crash locations and evaluating and prioritizing roadway safety improvements at high-crash locations, and to recommend improved methods. Several tasks were undertaken to accomplish these objectives, including the following: Review of program guidelines and procedures used by other states to prioritize improvements at high-crash locations Review and documentation of Kentucky’s current procedures Update of Kentucky’s Crash Buildup Program software to be compatible with the 2000 crash report form Development of new software to assist in estimating the benefits and costs of potential projects for inclusion in the Hazard Elimination Program Conversion of the dynamic programming software from mainframe to PC Results from the study include improved methods for identifying high-frequency crash locations and prioritizing those locations after preliminary analyses indicated a need to consider improvements at a crash site. Software was developed to produce a generalized estimate of the benefits and costs of potential projects for inclusion in the Hazard Elimination Program. Features included the following: 1) a menu of types of improvement projects and related reduction factors; 2) algorithms for calculating the present worth of annual benefits from crash reductions; and 3) benefit-cost comparisons for each project. The user must enter an estimate of project costs in order to estimate the benefit-cost ratio for the proposed improvement at a highway segment. Revisions were recommended for updating and enhancing the Crash Buildup Program to achieve compatibility with the current crash data report form and for translating the dynamic programming module from a mainframe operation to a PC-based system. It appears that an increased level of functionality has been achieved as a result of the series of modifications and improvements