Safety Evaluation of the Combined Effect of Offset Left-Turn Lanes and Flashing-Yellow-Arrow Signals at Signalized Intersections on Multilane Divided Highways in Alabama Using the Empirical Bayes Method

Abstract

The present study conducted an empirical Bayes (EB) before–after analysis to investigate the combined effects of the offset left-turn lanes and flashing-yellow-arrow (FYA) signals implemented at signalized intersections on multilane, divided highways in Alabama. A total of 35 signalized intersections were selected for the EB safety analysis. Among them, 30 intersections were classified as a reference group and five were classified as a treatment group. The reference group includes intersections which have not undergone any left-turn treatments from the period of 2010 to 2020, while the treatment group includes those improved with offset left-turn lanes and FYA signal implementation concurrently during years in that period. Safety performance functions were developed with data collected at reference-group intersections to predict crashes at such intersections under a no-treatment scenario. A study focus was then given to understanding the change in crash frequency before and after the combined treatments for the treatment-group intersections, using the EB method. Results show that the combined left-turn treatments (i.e., implementing offset left-turn lanes coupled with FYA signals) could reduce different types of crashes effectively. There was a substantial reduction of 27% in total crashes (crash modification factor [CMF] = 0.73), a 43% decrease in left-turn crashes (CMF = 0.57), and a 36% reduction in total injury crashes (CMF = 0.64) after the treatments. These findings were supported by their respective standard errors, which are 0.060, 0.101, and 0.106 for total, left-turn, and total injury crashes, respectively, and all the CMFs are statistically significant at 95% confidence intervals.