Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Spring 5-31-2002

Degree Name

Master of Science in Civil Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

First Advisor

Janice Rhoda Daniel

Second Advisor

I-Jy Steven Chien

Third Advisor

Athanassios K. Bladikas

Abstract

The state of New Jersey enacted two regulations with significant importance to the highway operations: 65 mph speed limit and truck restriction on the National Network. The speed limit of 65mph was used on limited sections of interstate system highways with an objective to reduce energy consumption by vehicles and truck restriction was used on the interstate system and other state highway system to reduce large truck accidents and thereby increase truck safety. In this research, the safety impacts of these two regulations on truck crashes were studied.

The research focused on monthly truck crashes along the highway sections where the regulations were implemented to determine whether there was an increase or decrease in truck crashes. In addition to simple before-after average comparisons, a complex time series method was used to analyze the monthly truck statistics. The effect of regulation was analyzed as an intervention parameter in a Box-Jenkins Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model of monthly truck crashes along entire routes and section of the routes. In general, the results were inconclusive.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.