Combining the Resources of the Existing State-Wide Roadway Databases and Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) to Improve the Safety of Two-Lane Rural Highways

In order to systematically analyze the trends in crash occurrence, Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has developed over the years a state-wide crash database and a GIS-based Data Almanac to search through the crash database as well as other databases including annual average daily traffic (AADT). The Data Almanac is a powerful search engine for extracting necessary crash data. Using the crash data provides one way to describe what has happened to the sections of highways that the analysts are evaluating. However, evaluating what might happen when improvements are made requires going one step further. The Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) developed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), may be used to help the engineers conduct crash prediction and design consistency evaluation and intersection safety review as part of highway safety audits. This software provides an opportunity to design, operation, and safety engineers for evaluating sections of two-lane highways from various aspects and identifying most cost effective improvement alternatives to such audited sections.