Highway Design and Traffic Safety Engineering - Hardcover

Lamm, Reudiger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0070382956 ISBN 13: 9780070382954

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education, 1999

Synopsis

This is the first book to present a thoroughly scientific and practical approach to designing highways for maximum safety. Based on original research plus scrupulously collected data amassed over more two decades in different continents by the main author, this important book originates vital criteria for safe design and shows you how best to achieve roads with the lowest possible accident risk and severity rates. In addition, this valuable and necessary resource gives you serious help coordinating safety concerns with important economic, environmental, and aesthetic considerations. Overall the book is an invaluable source of information for educators, students, scientists, highway agencies, and consultants in the field of highway design and traffic safety engineering.

About this title

From the Author

Highway Design and Traffic Safety Engineering Handbook
by Ruediger Lamm, Basil Psarianos, Theodor Mailaender et al.

The author, Ruediger Lamm, March 30, 1999.

The tragic consequence of traffic accidents puts unsafe traffic operations on a par with war and drug use. For example, more than 500.000 people are killed - or about one life every minute - and over 15 million suffer injuries as a result of road accidents every year worldwide. An estimate of a famous Prognosis Institute indicates that 50 million people will die and 1.1 billion will be injured from road accidents worldwide between 1995 and the year 2030. Put in the context of the 1995 population of nations, this represents the death of about 90 percent of the population of France and injury to every man, woman and child in China.

Of course, one could give the blame for those numbers to the irresponsible social behavior of drivers, but such a classification would be too easy and unfair.

Since decades it is believed that the existing highway geometric design guidelines in many countries should first of all guarantee a safe ride. Thus, if the guidelines guarantee the safety of a road, then "no" or "only a few" accidents should occur on that road. Therefore, it is often said, when a driver fails, it was his way of driving which caused the accident. However, when drivers fail a number of times at certain locations, then it becomes obvious that the problem lies, not with the drivers, but mainly with the geometry of the road itself.

In this connection, I want to cite a comment of my

"Having spent a lot of my career as a practising designer, I think I must have designed and built every mistake possible plus a few that nobody has thought of yet!" Exactly this was my feeling, when I decided many years ago, to write a book focusing on highway geometric design with special emphasis on traffic safety. The main intention was to also pro-vide for highway engineering quantitative safety criteria, comparable to those, which existed in other engineering fields, such as structural, since a long time.

After 10 years of rigorous research and evaluation of practical experience, my colleagues and I could clarify fundamental relationships and interrelationships between highway design, driving behavior, driving dynamics and accident characteristics. Based on this knowledge sound design rules in agreement with quantitative safety evaluation processes could be developed, in order to achieve good, and to detect fair (tolerable), and poor design practices. In this way the designer has a tool for decision-making in his hands, whether or not a planned or existing roadway section is acceptable from a safety point of view.

All relevant aspects presented and discussed in the various chapters always fall within the context of safety, in order to substantially comply with the worldwide effort of reducing the number and severity of road accidents.

I am confident that this book will definitely help to build or rebuild safer roads. If it helps to save only "one life", then our work was successful.

I hope you enjoy the book and feel free to write to me about your opinion.

Regards

Ruediger Lamm

From the Back Cover

"A THOROUGH LOOK AT HIGHWAY DESIGN WITH SPECIFIC EMPHASIS ON TRAFFIC SAFETY"

A breakthrough In Safe Highway Design

Truly unique, this is the first book to present a thoroughly scientific and practical approach to designing highways for maximum safety. Based on original research plus scrupulously collected data amassed over more than two decades in different continents by the main author, this important book originates vital criteria for safe design and shows you how best to achieve roads with the lowest possible accident risk and severity rates.

In addition, this valuable and necessary resource gives you serious help coordinating safety concerns with important economic, environmental, and aesthetic considerations.

Overall the book is an invaluable source of information for educators, students, scientists, highway agencies, and consultants in the field of highway design and traffic safety engineering.

A true must-read for highway engineers and safety officials, Highway Design and Traffic Safety Engineering Handbook provides up-to-date information that is available nowhere else and a complete, practical program for designing the safest possible roadways. The authors, who are noted international authorities on highway safety, give you essential information on:

- Sound new designs

- Design cases to avoid

- Examples of good and poor solutions

- Redesign of existing roads

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0070382956
• ISBN 13: 9780070382954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 1088