State Farm Dangerous Intersections

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Liberty University *

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600

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Mechanical_engineering

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May 11, 2024

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docx

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1) Identify the various constructs and concepts involved in the study. In this study, the concepts of dangerous intersections and accident severity make up the construct of intersection improvements – i.e., the changes or modifications that should be made to identified intersections in order to reduce future risk of accidents. Further, the concept of State Farm’s market share supports the reliability and comprehensiveness of its data. Although this study occurred decades ago before most vehicles possessed the suite of passive safety features that they do today (e.g., lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, etc.), it is still very important to conduct studies on traffic safety on a regular basis. Despite the advancement of passive safety technologies often made standard on modern vehicles, roadway injury is still the 8 th leading cause of death around the world, as reported by the World Health Organization (Mehdizadeh et al., 2020, p. 1). 2) What hypothesis might drive the research of one of the cities on the top 10 dangerous intersection list? As a city included in State Farm’s top 10 most dangerous intersections list, the problem statements are (1) how to improve the intersection’s safety without compromising efficiency of traffic flow and (2) how to fund those improvements without deprioritizing or destabilizing other duties of the city’s budget. With this in mind, a hypothesis from the city’s perspective would be along the lines of: By implementing certain improvements to intersection(s) identified as high-risk by traffic studies, there will be a reduction in the

number of accidents that occur at the intersection(s). With grants available for such improvements, the burden on the city’s budget will remain immaterial . While many accidents occur due to human behavior, there are other modern studies that support the idea of studying the safety of roads themselves. This is what Zheng et al. (2021) aimed to achieve in their study on traffic conflicts, which they defined as “an observable situation in which two or more road users approach each other in space and time to such an extent that there is a risk of collision if their movements remain unchanged” (p. 2). They concluded that while the study of traffic conflicts is not without its own issues, it is important to consider traffic conflicts along with crash data (p. 16). 3) Evaluate the methodology for State Farm’s research. The methodology of this research has a lot of strengths. First, State Farm’s research in this study has an unarguable focus on improving road safety by identifying and addressing some top problem intersections throughout the United States. As stated in the study, they modeled their research after the likes of the ICBC and AAA, demonstrating their willingness to learn from practices established by leaders in the industry. By offering to cities grants for not just traffic engineering studies, but also for the construction of improvements, State Farm does a great deal to incentivize cities towards participation and corrective action. By publicly releasing the location of the top 10 most dangerous intersections from this study, State

Farm demonstrates transparency while also spreading awareness – thus holding the affected municipalities accountable. However, weaknesses exist in the limitations of this study. By excluding accidents that occur at road/highway egresses and access ramps, State Farm may be forming an incomplete image of key safety issues. Further, by only including accidents in which a State-Farm insured driver was at fault, State Farm is not representing the full spectrum of drivers (namely, uninsured drivers who are at fault). State Farm is also not able to capture the population of minor accidents that are resolved between motorists and thus never reported to insurance. I also found the property damage classification index to be a limiting factor – in my opinion, it seems to be too complex in order to be interpreted and/or applied on a consistent basis. Understandably, It can be difficult to obtain a complete and unbiased picture during a study, as evidenced by Ahmed et al.’s (2022) review on global driving and traffic studies. In discussing what may seem like a comprehensive data pool including spot sensors, loop detectors, historical crash data, instrumented vehicles, crash simulators, and microsimulation modeling, the authors stated, “These data sources might not represent the actual driving environment at a trajectory level and might introduce bias due to their experimental control” (p. 1). These limitations aside, State Farm demonstrates a strong methodology given the time period of the study. 4) If you were State Farm, how would you address the concerns of transportation engineers?

As it may not be difficult to infer, transportation engineers play a pivotal role in road safety. When planning roadway designs, factors such as geometric design, speed control, and flow of traffic are characteristics of top concern with respect to safety (Raheel Shah et al., 2019, p. 202). To alleviate concerns held by these folks and increase overall willingness to participate, State Farm could offer a long-term, collaborative approach in which the insurer engages engineering teams from the beginning stages of interpreting data and planning changes all the way through completion of the projects. Throughout the process, State Farm could exercise further due diligence by improving its methodology and offering updated insights with engineering teams as they go. Genesis 2:18 reads, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001). Thus, State Farm would also be demonstrating biblical principles by exercising this level of due diligence. 5) If you were State Farm, would you use traffic volume counts as part of the 2003 study? What concerns, other than those expressed by Nepomuceno, do you have? I would use traffic counts as a means to identify relationships between traffic volume and accident rates. Nepomuceno expresses concerns of low volume roads with few crashes being deprioritized and the effort of processing this extra data. Understandably so, the time and resources needed to process this data would need to be considered. I would also be concerned about the reliability of traffic volume data - yet another aspect

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