Investigation and MASH Full-Scale Crash Testing of the Practice of Raising Blockouts on W-Beam Rail Systems

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) clarifies appropriate height measures for W-beam guardrails. Identification of existing locations where rail height is lower than recommended by FHWA is common. A research study was conducted to investigate the crashworthiness of raising blockouts on posts to restore barrier height and provide clarification on implementation of such methodology. The researchers evaluated the crashworthiness of raising blockouts by conducting a full-scale Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Crash Test 3-11 of a 28-in. W-beam guardrail system with composite blockouts raised 4 in. on posts. The 28-in. W-beam guardrail system with raised composite blockouts contained and redirected the 2270P vehicle, and it performed acceptably for MASH Test 3-11. The results of this study include guidance on the procedure for raising blockout mounting height on steel posts to achieve recommended rail height for a W-beam guardrail.

A Users Guide to Performance Engineered Mixtures

Performance Engineered Mixtures is an initiative, spearheaded by the Federal Highway Administration and the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center, in cooperation with state Departments of Transportation and the concrete paving industry, to develop a comprehensive approach to modernizing the way concrete is specified, tested, and accepted. It focusses on three components: testing of six critical concrete properties, a robust approach to quality control, and the replacement of prescriptive specifications. Many new tests have been recently developed that provide the ability to test concrete properties more easily and quicker than in the past. This paper provides background of how this initiative began. It elaborates on each of the six properties of concrete that are the focus of PEM. The new tests that are integral to the PEM process are described. The effects PEM will have on the acceptance process and the quality control responsibilities are outlined. Finally, tables are included which list the properties and the tests that are associated with each property, as well as how each is applied to each step of the paving process.

Guidance for Increasing the Use of Recycled Concrete Pavement Materials

Recycling concrete pavements has been a common practice in the US for decades, and recently, public agencies have been more closely examining recycling opportunities. Reasons supporting recycling include the diminishing quantity of good natural materials, economics, improved project execution, minimizing traffic disruption, and supporting sustainability goals. Many states, however, have specifications or policies that restrict concrete pavement recycling. The contracting industry may overlook opportunities to use recycled concrete aggregates (RCAs) due to a lack of familiarity with technical requirements or uncertainty of performance. The National Concrete Pavement Technology Center (CP Tech Center) recently completed a comprehensive set of technical resources for the Federal Highway Administration to assist practitioners with sound approaches to project selection, scoping and construction requirements to support increased use of recycled concrete pavement materials. This paper describes the results of a 2016 survey of agency and industry RCA usage, presents an overview of the technical resources prepared as part of this initiative, and presents recommendations for supporting broader application of recycling concrete pavement materials.

Dynamics of exposure to mercury in a population of the upper Madeira River, Rondônia – Brazil

This work evaluates the influence of cognitive and sociodemographic functions on the dynamics of human exposure to mercury in communities on the upper Madeira River in the state of Rondônia, Brazil. In this longitudinal epidemiological study of convenience sampling (2009 to 2019), semi-structured questionnaires on cognitive and sociodemographic aspects were applied to 1,089 participants (646 men and 443 women) divided into 6 groups with distinct geographic characteristics and lifestyles. Total mercury concentrations in hair samples were determined by direct analysis using atomic spectroscopy. In this population, cognitive (memory, attention span, concentration and difficulties in reading, writing and mathematical calculations) and sociodemographic (location, gender, age, education, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, time of residence in the region, occupation) grouping showed the differentiation between the groups with lifestyle directly related and dependent on extractivism/gold mining dispersed along the Madeira River (G1 and G2), and the groups that have urban dynamics on the margins of the federal highway BR-364 (G3, G4, G5 and G6). Sex, age and lifestyle (groups) were significant indicators of total mercury concentrations in hair. The organization of participants according to cognitive and sociodemographic profiles, regardless of geographic location, highlights the contribution of individualized social dynamics to mercury exposure in the Madeira River basin region. Despite socio-historical and socio-economic similarities, cognitive and sociodemographic functions show individualized social behaviors within communities, which may influence the process of exposure to THg.

Road Surface Characteristics for the Automotive 77 GHz Band

In order to achieve a safety proof of autonomous driving using simulations, information about the environment has to be determined, which is not sufficiently available until now. This work is concerned with road surfaces and their scattering of radar signals. As it is not enough to look at geometries, as it is already done for many ray tracing approaches, also material and composition have to be investigated. Therefore, measurements are performed using a SAR setup in a laboratory as well as open space measurements using a radar evaluation board on a testing area of the Federal Highway Research Institute. The SAR setup enables a quick estimation on differences in reflection of different test objects. With the result from the latter values for the relative permittivity are calculated for different road surface types exploiting Fresnel's equations. The differences in reflection depending on material and surface structure of the road see in the measurements of both setups are discussed in the paper.

Environmental control: charting a course for the Navajo reservation through road construction, 1945–1978

This article examines the history of road planning in the decades following the Second World War on the Navajo Nation. Federal highway planners and Navajo residents had conflicting ideas about the role of roads in the Nation's postwar development. The planners’ support for highways near uranium mines undermined efforts towards Navajo self-development and modernization. Federally planned and subsidized highways granted extractive industries control over large portions of the Nation. Those highways locked in a regime of environmental exploitation that caused severe and debilitating public health consequences for Navajo communities.

Determining traffic congestion utilizing a fuzzy logic model and Floating Car Data (FCD)

Traffic congestion is a dynamic spatial and temporal process and as such might not be possible to model with linear functions of various dependent variables. That leaves a lot of space for non-linear approximates, such as neutral networks and fuzzy logic. In this paper, the focus is on the fuzzy logic as a possible approach for dealing with the problems of measuring traffic congestion. We investigate the application of this framework on a selected case study, and use floating car data (FCD) collected in Augsburg, Germany. A fuzzy inference system is built to detect degrees of congestion on a federal highway B17. With FCD, it is possible to obtain local speed information on almost all parts of the network. This information, together with collected vehicle location, time and heading, can be further processed and transformed into valuable information in the form of trip routes, travel times, etc. Initial results are compared with traditional method of expressing levels of congestion on a road network e.g. Level of Service – LOS. The fuzzy model, with segmented mean speed and travel time parameters, performed well and showed to be promising approach to detect traffic congestions. This approach can be further improved by involving more input parameters, such as density or vehicle flow, which might reflect traffic congestion event even more realistically.

Roadkills of Lowland Tapir Tapirus terrestris (Mammalia: Perissodactyla: Tapiridae) in one of its last refuges in the Atlantic Forest

Highways limit the movement and dispersion of wild animals and contribute to their loss due to roadkills, leading to the isolation and decline of populations, increasing the risk of local extinction. The Lowland Tapir Tapirus terrestris is the largest neotropical herbivore-frugivore, and despite its wide distribution in South America it is threatened with extinction. In this study we report six roadkill events of tapirs between 2014 and 2019 in a section of a federal highway crossing the mosaic of Atlantic Forest reserves called Sooretama, one of the last tapir refuges in southeastern Brazil. The traffic in this area is heavy with inadequate speed control, while exotic fruit trees growing along the highway attract wild animals. Water drainage tunnels serve as passageways for some species, including tapirs. However, the tunnels located under the highway are not continuously maintained, reducing its effectiveness. The loss of at least one tapir per year can have serious long-term consequences for one of the last viable lowland tapir populations in the entire Atlantic Forest. Emergency measures are required to avoid vehicle-tapir collisions.

Deep Ensemble Neural Network Approach for Federal Highway Administration Axle-Based Vehicle Classification Using Advanced Single Inductive Loops

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) vehicle classification scheme is designed to serve various transportation needs such as pavement design, emission estimation, and transportation planning. Many transportation agencies rely on Weigh-In-Motion and Automatic Vehicle Classification sites to collect these essential vehicle classification counts. However, the spatial coverage of these detection sites across the highway network is limited by high installation and maintenance costs. One cost-effective approach has been the use of single inductive loop sensors as an alternative to obtaining FHWA vehicle classification data. However, most data sets used to develop such models are skewed since many classes associated with larger truck configurations are less commonly observed in the roadway network. This makes it more difficult to accurately classify under-represented classes, even though many of these minority classes may have disproportionately adverse effects on pavement infrastructure and the environment. Therefore, previous models have been unable to adequately classify under-represented classes, and the overall performance of the models is often masked by excellent classification accuracy of majority classes, such as passenger vehicles and five-axle tractor-trailers. To resolve the challenge of imbalanced data sets in the FHWA vehicle classification, this paper constructed a bootstrap aggregating deep neural network model on a truck-focused data set using single inductive loop signatures. The proposed method significantly improved the model performance on several truck classes, especially minority classes such as Classes 7 and 11 which were overlooked in previous research. The model was tested on a distinct data set obtained from four spatially independent sites and achieved an accuracy of 0.87 and an average F1 score of 0.72.

Organization of the provision of specialized medical care to injured in road accidents on the federal highway M-8 «Kholmogory» in the Arkhangelsk region during the hospital period

Relevance. Road traffic injuries are a global pandemic and one of the leading causes of death in the population. Federal highway M-8 “Kholmogory” is the leading transport artery of the European North of the country; has pronounced features inherent in all northern roads: significant distances between settlements and difficult road conditions, which together increase the risk of road traffic accidents (RTA) with medical consequences, and also seriously complicate the process of providing medical care to injured.Intention. To analize provision of specialized medical care to injured in RTA on the federal highway M-8 “Kholmogory” in the Arkhangelsk region during the hospital period and propose improvements.Methodology. Domestic and foreign publications on the organizational approaches to the provision of specialized medical care to injured in road traffic accidents during the hospital period were analyzed based on specialized scientific search engines (eLibrary, PubMed, Scopus).Results and Discussion. Problems in the organization of medical care to injured in RTA on the federal highway M-8 “Kholmogory” in the Arkhangelsk region during the hospital period were identified and systematized. The ways of its improvement are outlined.Conclusion. Implementation of the measures proposed will reduce medical and sanitary consequences, concomitant road traffic injuries on the federal highway, including disability and mortality in the medium and long term.