The Federal Highway Administration sponsored a study to determine the nature and magnitude of accidents related to roadside drainage structures. Accident data from national and state data bases for the years 1981-1984 were analysed with respect to their relationship to drainage structures. The findings revealed that drainage structures were involved in approximately 9 percent of all accidents on federal-aid roads and were the first object struck in approximately 4.5 Percent of all accidents. A high incidence of fatalities and serious injuries were associated with these accidents. Most of the accidents involved a single vehicle that struck a curb, ditch, embankment, or culvert. Drainage-structure-related accidents predominantly involved a single vehicle and occurred in a higher proportion at night and in adverse weather compared to the same characteristics for all accidents. Based on the findings related to roadway characteristics, drainage-structure accidents were over-represented on federal-aid secondary roads, at non-junctions, in curves and on grades, and on wet surfaces. This paper contains a brief summary of the study results. A complete documentation of the methodology and findings may be found in FHWA report DTFH61-85-C-00065.
Samenvatting