Driveway

Abstract: All pedestrian vehicle collision fatalities to children less than five years of age in Washington State were evaluated for a five-year period using State death certificates, coroners' reports, and police records. Although the majority of pedestrian fatalities to older children have been shown to be due to "dart-outs" into traffic with the child being struck by an oncoming car, pedestrian fatality incident for children less than five tended to occur when the child was backed over in the home driveway by the family van or light truck driven by a parent. Prevention of pedestrian injuries in this age group requires strategies aimed at safeguarding the driveway and reassessing the safety of light trucks and vans as family vehicles.

Abstract: The development of a model for predicting the safety of an urban arterial street with a specified median treatment is described. The median treatments considered are raised-curb median, two-way left-turn lane (TWL TL), and undivided cross section. The model calibration was based on maximum-likelihood techniques, an assumed negative binomial distribution of the residuals, and a nonlinear relationship between accident frequency and daily traffic demand and segment length. Several conclusions were formulated on the basis of the model developed. One conclusion is that average daily traffic demand, driveway density, unsignalized public street approach density, median type, and adjacent land use are significantly correlated with accident frequency. In general, accidents are more frequent on street segments with higher traffic demands, driveway densities, or public street densities. Accidents are also more frequent when the land use is business or office as opposed to residential or industrial. The undivided cro...