One technique used to improve highway safety from the point of view of the infrastructure is to examine the consistency of the design. Design consistency refers to if highway geometry is conformance to driver expectancy. When the consistency of the road is inadequate, the more likely it is that drivers will be startled and a crash will occur. The consistency, based on operating speed, has been calculated in Spanish two-lane rural highways. This consistency has been evaluated using a local method, to measure the consistency of each element of the road and using a global method, to measure the consistency of a segment of the road. Different models of consistency have been compared using Decision Trees (DTs). DTs are a Data Mining Techniques which can be used to solve classification problems. The results show that DTs are a suitable technique to compare consistence models and they permit to establish limits between the different models analyzed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract