Study Details
Study Title: Evaluating safety risk of locating above ground utility structures in the highway right-of-way
Authors: El Esawey and Sayed
Publication Date:NOV, 2012
Abstract: Roadside safety has been a concern for highway engineers and designers for many decades. A significant part of this concern is related to collisions with utility poles. Current practices and standards for placing utility poles are based on a combination of qualitative guidelines/heuristics and relatively outdated findings. Accordingly, there is a need to study the safety level associated with placing utility poles at different lateral offsets from the edge of the travel-way. In this paper a Safety Performance Function (SPF) is developed to relate roadway and roadside variables to utility pole collision frequency. It was found that increasing the poles offset has a more significant effect on reducing the frequency of utility pole collisions compared to increasing poles spacing. Based on the developed utility pole-SPF, design charts were provided to facilitate calculations and decision-making process. The developed utility pole-SPF was compared to a widely-used utility pole collisions model and the differences in the type of data and the development methodology were highlighted.
Study Citation: El Esawey, M. and T. Sayed, "Evaluating safety risk of locating above ground utility structures in the highway right-of-way." Accident Analysis and Prevention, Vol. 49, Elsevier, (2012) pp. 419-428.
CMFs Associated With This Study
Category: Roadside
Countermeasure: Change the lateral offset of utility poles
| CMF | CRF(%) | Quality | Crash Type | Crash Severity | Roadway Type | Area Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |  | Fixed object | Not specified | Rural |
Countermeasure: Change the longitudinal density of utility poles
| CMF | CRF(%) | Quality | Crash Type | Crash Severity | Roadway Type | Area Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | Fixed object | Not specified | Rural |
