Pennsylvania Study looks at Work Zone Crashes and Injuries

The research reviewed over 5,000 work zones in Pennsylvania from a three-year period (2015-2017), alongside factors such as weather conditions, traffic counts, traffic speeds, amongst other data.

“So far, we cannot say what mitigation efforts can lead to the safest work zones; this will be our next step. But this provides insights on under what conditions a work zone can lead to more crashes, and when a work zone does not,” said Sean Qian, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Mobility Data Analytics Center.

The study noted that although work zones do not necessarily increase traffic accidents, certain conditions can increase the risk. Factors like heavy traffic areas, or longevity of work zones can lead to increased crash sites.

“For instance, it could be that high traffic volumes lead to more retrofit projects and more crashes, in this case, crashes may not be caused by work zones, but it does show that work zone presence and crashes are related,” said Qian.

Technology providers have made steps to make highway work zones safer, such as One.Network who developed the Work Zone Data Exchange (WZDx) as a way to standardize and share work zone data across multiple parties. The WZDx brings work zone data from multiple sources and agencies, and then makes the data available as a single data feed, said Simon Topp, chief commercial officer for One.Network.

Making roadway data more readily available has the potential of making work zones safer. The Pennsylvania study did directly address the issue of what happens when this information is sent to drivers.

“Depending on what and how information is provided to drivers and how the information is designed, it is hard to predict the impact without sufficient data,” said Qian. “The contribution of this paper is, however, to show that the causal relation can be inferred, enabled by a large-scale pool of multiyear data from various sources.”

Increasing work zone safety will likely become a higher-level concern as states and regions begin efforts to improve transportation infrastructure as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which will unleash significant amounts of new funding to help upgrade roads and bridges in the next five years.

“The pandemic may have changed the trend, but I anticipate an increasing number of work zones due to aging infrastructure,” said Qian. “And yes, more to come in the next decade of repairing our highway infrastructure. Safety is No. 1 priority when retrofitting our infrastructure systems.”