ANALYZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRADE CROSSING ELEMENTS AND ACCIDENTS

Highway-rail grade crossing accidents result in severe crashes with trains and other vehicles every year and, account for approximately 60 percent of all grade crossing fatalities. Despite the number of highway-rail grade crossing accidents, quantification of the effect of possible countermeasures has been surprisingly limited due to the absence of data needed to rigorously analyze factors affecting the frequency of highway-rail grade crossing accidents. This study provides some initial insight into this important problem including a detailed database on roadway geometric and grade crossing elements to analyze highway-rail grade crossing accidents on one hundred individual grade crossings in Korea. Zero-inflated models of accident frequency are developed and the findings isolate a wide range of factors that significantly influence the highway-rail grade crossing accident frequency. The marginal effects of these factors are computed to provide an indication on the effectiveness of potential countermeasures. The findings show promise for the methodological approach undertaken and provide important directions for future railroad research.