| dc.description.abstract | Disagreements regarding to what degree right-turn lanes improve or worsen the safety of intersections and driveways provided the motivation and the need for this study. The objectives of this study were to: a) carry out an in-depth study to determine the safety impacts of right-turn movements in different contexts, and b) develop safety-based volume warrants for right-turn lanes if safety indeed improves. Lack of adequate study on the applicability of past warrants and guidelines for the specific context of right-turn movements made from major uncontrolled approaches at unsignalized intersections, and particularly driveways, on two-lane roadways provided the scope for this study.
Five-year historical data of statewide traffic crashes reported on Minnesota’s twolane trunk highways were analyzed using binary/multinomial logistic regressions. Conflicts due to right turns were analyzed by fitting least squares conflict prediction models based on the data obtained from field surveys and traffic simulations. The safety impacts of rightturn lanes were determined through crash-conflict relationships, crash injury severity, and crash and construction costs.
The study found that the probabilities of right-turn movement related crash ranged from 1.6 to 17.2% at intersections and from 7.8 to 38.7% at driveways. Rear-end, samedirection- sideswipe, right-angle and right-turn crash types constituted 96% of right-turn movement related crashes. Rear-end crash probabilities varied from 13.7 to 46.4% at approaches with right-turn lanes and from 37.9 to 76.9% otherwise. The ratios of rearend/ same-direction-sideswipe crashes to conflicts were 0.759 x 10^6 at approaches with right-turn lanes and 1.547 x 10^6 otherwise.
Overall, right-turn lanes reduced right-turn movement related crash occurrences and conflicts by 85% and 80%, respectively. Right-turn lanes also reduced crash injury severity, hence, reducing the economic cost by 26%. Safety benefits, in dollars, realized with the use of right-turn lanes at driveways were 29% and 7% higher compared to those at intersections at low and high speed conditions respectively for similar traffic conditions. Depending on roadway conditions, interest rate and construction costs, the safety-based volume thresholds ranged from 3 to 200 right turns per hour during the design hour at intersection approaches, and from 2 to 175 right turns at driveway approaches. | en_US |
