Evaluating Roadside Hazards Using Computer‐Simulation Model

The ability to accurately evaluate roadside hazards is very important to highway safety officials and researchers, who are concerned with reducing the frequency, severity, and ultimately, the cost of “run‐off‐the‐road” highway accidents. The roadside environment in the province of British Columbia, Canada, contains many hazards to motorists due to severe topographical characteristics, including steep embankment slopes and numerous roadside features that would cause harm if struck by a vehicle. This paper describes the need to accurately evaluate hazardous roadside locations by outlining the limitations in the existing procedures and summarizing the effectiveness of a computer simulation model, the roadside‐hazard—simulation model: version 9. The model contains dynamic vehicle simulation with traffic and roadway conditions to estimate the effectiveness of a variety of countermeasures. These countermeasures can then be ranked by economic evaluation criteria, such as benefit/cost ratio and cost‐effectiveness.