Development of Severity Model for Rural Unsignalized Intersection Crashes

Generally, accident exposure at intersections is relatively higher than that at roadway segments due to more possibility of merging, diverging, turning, crossing, and weaving maneuver. Furthermore, the traffic accident rate at intersections has been rapidly increasing since 1990's. Since there is more opportunity of conflict at unsignalized intersection, frequency and severity of traffic accident are more severe than signalized intersections. The purpose of the study is to analyze factors causing vehicle crashes and provide intersection design guidelines to improve intersection safety. For this study, vehicle to vehicle crash data of 116 rural 3 legs unsignalized were collected and field surveys were conducted for traffic and geometric conditions. Ordered probit models were developed to analyze the severity of crashes. It was found that weather, obstacles in minor roadsides, presence of major exclusive right lane, presence of major road crosswalk, difference between posted speed of major road and minor road, land-use around intersections, shoulder width of major road, ADT of major road are significant factors for intersection safety.