Calibration and Development of Safety Performance Functions for New Jersey

The predictive models provided by the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) are based on safety performance functions (SPFs), which are statistical regression models based on observed crash data from similar facility types that estimate the predicted average crash frequency for the base conditions. To make the SPFs better accommodate the local data, two strategies are usually undertaken: the first strategy is to calibrate SPFs provided in HSM so that the contents of HSM can be fully leveraged and the second strategy is to develop location-specific SPFs regardless of the predictive modeling framework in the HSM. The main objective of this talk was to summarize the NJDOT project titled “Calibration / Development of SPFs for New Jersey”. The aim of this project was both to calibrate and develop the SPFs provided in the HSM using New Jersey (NJ) data. The facility types considered in this research project included segments and intersections of rural two-lane two-way, rural multilane, and urban and suburban roads. Calibration and development of SPFs both required significant time, effort and resources, and detailed data from different sources. This talk also presented a detailed discussion of data needs and availability, data processing methods and approaches to gather the required data for calibration and development of SPFs. While presenting the results of the SPF calibration and development process, this talk also pointed to the importance of crash location information and its impact on analyses results.

Bekir Bartin
Dr. Bekir Bartin is a full time Associate Professor in Civil Engineering Department at Ozyeğin University in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to his current position he was the founding chair at Civil Engineering Department at Altınbaş University (formerly Istanbul Kemerburgaz University). Dr. Bartin worked as a full-time research associate at Rutgers University from 2006 to 2012, where he conducted research projects, supervised a team of graduate students, and taught graduate and undergraduate courses. He has a Ph.D. (’06) and M.Sc. (’00) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Rutgers University, and a B.Sc. (‘97) in Civil Engineering from Middle East Technical University. His research expertise lies in development of simulation models of large scale complex transportation systems, application of reinforcement learning methods in traffic simulation, economic evaluation of transportation investment projects, traffic safety and security. He has served as the principal and co-principal investigator of more than 20 research projects. Dr. Bartin has published 33 peer-reviewed journal articles, 2 book chapters and nearly 50 conference proceedings. He is an affiliate of the C2SMART center, a first tier University Transportation Center at New York University (NYU), funded by the U.S Department of Transportation.

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