Research on Highway Roadside Safety

Abstract

Frequent and serious traffic accidents have become a focal issue because they hinder the sustainable development of society. In China, roadside accidents account for 40% of fatalities resulting from traffic accidents. Roadside safety has become an important issue of traffic management departments worldwide, and performing research on roadside safety contributes to improving the level of road safety and reducing the number of traffic accidents and fatalities. By systematically sorting a large number of relevant studies, this paper analyzed the current development trends of roadside safety in terms of three aspects (i.e., the year of publication, the country of publication, and the source of publication) and then summarized the research status, existing gaps, and future development directions of roadside safety in terms of three aspects: the frequency of roadside accidents, the severity of roadside accidents, and the practice of roadside safety design. This paper reviewed the different prediction methods and evaluation models for the frequency and severity of roadside accidents. According to the number of times mentioned in the literature, the first five significant risk factors that cause frequent roadside accidents are small-radius curves, heavy traffic, objects adjacent to the lane (such as poles and trees), narrow lanes, and narrow shoulders, and the first five significant risk factors that cause fatal roadside accidents are driver age ≤25 or ≥65, alcohol, speeding, failure to use seat belts, and heavy trucks. Future research on the frequency and severity of roadside accidents should focus on quantitatively analyzing the probability of roadside accidents and occupant injury risk and developing methods for identifying roadside accident blackspots. For roadside safety design, roadside clear zones and safety slopes should be precisely quantified based on a cost-benefit analysis in future studies.