Determination of safe vehicle driving speeds on highways during hurricane evacuations

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

12-1-2005

Abstract

The negative effects of strong winds on the safety of vehicles have been recognized and reported upon for some time worldwide. In the United States, wind gusts have been found to be a primary contributor to motor vehicle accidents, especially those involving trucks. Traffic safety is a key component of hurricane evacuation, especially when weather conditions are not favorable. After including a brief summary of the current criteria used for determining route closures as well as several examples of how these criteria have been established, this paper presents a methodology for determining safe driving speeds on highways in windy environments, including hurricane evacuations. With the current model, dynamic interaction analysis is first conducted on the vehicle-highway system. The results of the vehicle-highway interaction vibrations then serve as the basis for the accident analysis, such as sliding and overturning. The stability conditions of the vehicles in wind are analyzed and the safe driving speed is then identified with accident criteria that consider the surface conditions of highways, such as roughness and friction. Complicated weather, road and driver operation process, such as rain, snow, camber, grade and acceleration/deceleration processes are modeled to replicate the real environments during evacuations. Copyright © 2005 ITAM.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

EACWE 2005 - 4th European and African Conference on Wind Engineering

First Page

70

Last Page

71

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