The effects of lighting on driver's injury severity at highway-rail grade crossings

This study estimates the safety effect of illumination on accidents at highway-rail grade crossings in the United States, using data from exhaustive data from Federal Railroad Administration database covering the period 2002-2011. Using mixed logit modeling approach, the study explores the determinants of driver injury severity at unlighted highway-rail grade crossings compared with lighted highway-rail grade crossings in the United States. Several key issues are explored including availability of relevant highway-rail grade crossing accident inventory data; relevant data element structures; specification and estimation of models to estimate driver's injury severity with lighting and without lighting; and techniques to interpret model parameters. Overall, highway-rail grade crossing lighting improves safety by reducing the probability of high-level injury severity through improvements in driver's visibility compared with unlighted intersections. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.