Interim Roadway Safety Design Workbook

Highway safety is an ongoing concern to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). As part of its proactive commitment to improving highway safety, TxDOT is moving toward including quantitative safety analyses earlier in the project development process. The objectives of this research project are: (1) the development of safety design guidelines and evaluation tools to be used by TxDOT designers, and (2) the production of a plan for the incorporation of these guidelines and evaluation tools in the planning and design stages of the project development process. This document provides the best-available information describing the relationship between various highway geometric design components and crash frequency. It is intended to be used by engineers for the purpose of explicitly evaluating the potential safety trade-offs associated with various design alternatives. This document focuses on quantitative safety relationships for specific design components known to be correlated with crash frequency. It is intended for engineers responsible for the geometric design of streets and highways. The methods used to develop the information presented herein are documented in the Roadway Safety Design Synthesis.