Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Florida International University, 10555 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33174, United States.
School of Engineering, University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32224, United States.
Accid Anal Prev. 2021 Jun;156:106129. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2021.106129. Epub 2021 Apr 29.
Many transportation agencies utilize freeway service patrols (FSPs) to quickly identify and respond to incidents. The objectives of FSP are to minimize the incident duration and increase safety at the incident scene. The current research explored the safety benefits of Florida's FSP program known as Road Rangers - harnessed from lowering the likelihood of secondary crashes (SCs) - compared to other responding agencies. The analysis was done on 6088 incidents that occurred on freeways in Jacksonville, Florida, from 2015 through 2017. Since SCs were not explicitly identified in the SunGuide® incident database, the study adopted a data-driven technique that used BlueToad® speed data to identify them. Once SCs were identified, a model was developed to identify factors influencing their occurrence. Factors such as an increase in equivalent hourly traffic volume, incident impact duration, and the percent of lanes closed significantly increased the likelihood of a SC. Besides, moderate/severe incidents, crash events, weekdays, peak hours, shoulder blockage, and incidents involving towing showed a high likelihood of resulting in a SC. Of practical importance, the model results revealed that a minute increase in incident impact duration increased the SC probability by 1.2 percent, with other factors held constant. Based on a 16-minutes decrease in incident impact duration, the Road Rangers program could lessen the probability of SCs by 21 percent, compared to other agencies. These findings could be beneficial to incident managers, responders, and researchers in evaluating the program's performance.
许多交通机构利用高速公路服务巡逻队（FSP）快速识别和应对事故。FSP 的目标是尽量减少事故持续时间并提高事故现场的安全性。本研究探讨了佛罗里达州的 FSP 计划（称为 Road Rangers）的安全效益，该计划旨在降低二次碰撞（SCs）的可能性，与其他响应机构相比。分析是在 2015 年至 2017 年期间佛罗里达州杰克逊维尔的高速公路上发生的 6088 起事故上进行的。由于 SunGuide®事故数据库中没有明确标识 SCs，因此该研究采用了一种数据驱动的技术，使用 BlueToad®速度数据来识别它们。一旦识别出 SCs，就开发了一个模型来识别影响它们发生的因素。例如，等效每小时交通量增加、事故影响持续时间和封闭车道的百分比显著增加了 SC 的可能性。此外，中度/严重事故、碰撞事件、工作日、高峰时间、肩部堵塞以及涉及拖曳的事故显示出发生 SC 的高可能性。重要的是，模型结果表明，在其他因素保持不变的情况下，事故影响持续时间每增加一分钟，SC 的可能性就会增加 1.2%。根据事故影响持续时间减少 16 分钟，与其他机构相比，Road Rangers 计划可以将 SC 的可能性降低 21%。这些发现可能对事故管理人员、响应者和研究人员评估该计划的绩效很有帮助。
