Field Data Collection and Analyses to Support the Selection of Pedestrian Safety Countermeasures in Las Vegas

Crash reduction factors (CRFs) are used in highway safety studies to estimate how far a countermeasure may potentially reduce the number of crashes on a given roadway location. As with most states in the United States, Florida developed its CRFs based on the before-and-after approach, which requires the use of crash records and implemented safety improvement projects. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) did not have a central database for safety improvement projects. Consequently, historical data for improvement projects were maintained separately at various district offices in various formats and were not easily accessible for the purpose of statewide CFR development. This paper describes an effort by FDOT to develop a user-friendly database system for the systematic maintenance of a new standard set of safety improvement projects and for continued update of CRFs as new data become available. Currently, no similar system is known to exist. It may serve as a prototype by states planning to develop a similar system that it tailored to their improvement projects and crash records.