Improving safety of urban roads through speed management

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Excessive driving speed is one of the major obstacles to road safety. Managing speed requires complex decision-making on the part of transportation agencies and engineers at both the design and operational stages; however, comprehensive support for these decisions is still lacking, particularly for issues relating to urban roadways. The result has been an increasing number of speed-related accidents in Canada. This research program proposes a holistic solution to the issue of urban speed management. The major component of this research program will develop a knowledge-based expert system for selecting optimal speed management countermeasures or treatments to address specific speeding problems. The system will combine information on driver behaviours, road geometry, and other information related to speed and safety issues in a knowledge base to identify potential speed management countermeasures. In support of this development, the proposed research program will first investigate the effects of urban street design and the roadside environment on speeds and speeding-related accidents. This information will then form the basis of a novel algorithm to predict speed on urban roads. These components will not only enhance the knowledge base of the expert system, but also make an important contribution to the problem of addressing speed management during the design phase. This proactive approach helps drivers to reduce their speeds naturally, rather than through countermeasures and enforcement alone. In addition to the training and education contributions of this program, which benefit Canada's increasingly urgent need for highly qualified transportation engineers and planners, the proposed research program's expert system and speed prediction algorithm represent valuable and original developments for supporting the establishment of more robust speed management best practices. Not only will these bridge a critical gap that exists for practitioners in the field, they provide a strong foundation and resource for advancing this underdeveloped, yet crucial, area of transportation research.