Alabama Transportation Institute
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Leading the Way for Emerging Transportation Solutions
Our interdisciplinary institute enables Alabama to lead the way on emerging issues like developing creative solutions for financing the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, advancing transportation safety research, and evaluating the impact that a quality transportation system will have on Alabama’s economic future. ATI serves as an independent resource that develops unbiased information for local, state, and national leaders in developing transportation policy. The result is more and better-informed decision-making that leads to innovative, data-driven, cost-effective solutions that advance Alabama’s economy, safety, and quality of life through transportation.
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Item Pilot Study of Automated Red Light Enforcement(University Transportation Center for Alabama, 2003-09-30) Supriyasilp, Thitipat; Turner, Daniel S.; Lindly, Jay K.Alabama and the City of Birmingham have been identified by a national safety organization as having red light running (RLR) fatality rates among the worst in the nation. This project confirmed that problem by identifying 47,501 RLR crashes in Alabama over a nine-year period. There were 16,306 injuries and fatalities in these crashes. A RLR camera system installed in Tuscaloosa for a year found further confirmation of the problem. It detected 13,647 violations out of 2,726,061 vehicles that passed through the system (one out of every 200 vehicles). The project investigated how the RLR camera system operated, tested its accuracy, and looked at camera installation and operation at three different intersections. The camera performed within the accuracy and efficiency characteristics advertised by the vendor. All data was transmitted quickly to a Web site, where it was analyzed and stored for viewing. The research team analyzed the results of the Tuscaloosa pilot project, and made the following recommendations: • An Alabama oversight committee should be formed to encourage adoption of RLR camera programs. • Legislation should be pursued in Alabama to enable automated enforcement of RLR. • In selecting sites for RLR cameras, the primary criteria should be crash history, violation history, opinions of local traffic engineers and law enforcement officials, and similar factors. • Fine revenues collected from RLR camera citations should be distributed according to the provisions in Alabama House bill 683, introduced in the 2001 Legislature. • Where excess revenues (beyond the cost of the RLR camera program) are generated, they should be dedicated to safety and road projects in the host city. The research staff strongly encourages the adoption of automated enforcement of RLR in Alabama, as a safety countermeasure to mitigate the approximately 5,278 RLR collisions that occur each year, and to reduce the approximately 1,812 Alabama citizens injured and killed each year in these collisions.Publication h(2007-11-11)Item Traffic Safety Effectiveness of Additional State Troopers in Alabama(2011-05) Steil, Dana; Brown, DavidItem Work Zone Analysis(2014-03-19) Brown, David B.Item Considerations for Optimal Traffic Safety Allocation(2014-10) Brown, David B.Item Vehicle and Driver At-Fault Comparisons(2014-10-27) Brown, David B.; Smith, RandyItem Roadway Lighting Study: 2009-2013 Alabama Crash Data(2014-11-26) Brown, David B.Item Analysis of Motorcycle Caused and Motorcycle Victim Crashes CY2010-2014 Data(2015-10-23) Brown, DaveThis report has the objective of presenting a problem identification that was done on motorcycle (MC) crashes with the goal of establishing and improving countermeasures for reducing these crash frequencies and severities in the future.Item Analysis of Distracted Driving in Alabama 2012-2016 Data(2017-06) Brown, David B.; Stricklin, RhondaItem Analysis of Fatal Crashes in CY2016 as Compared to CY2014(2017-08) Brown, David B.; Stricklin, Rhonda; Norris, JesseItem Analysis of Speed-Related Crashes in CY2012-2016(2017-09) Brown, David B.; Stricklin, Rhonda; Norris, JesseItem Analysis of the Most Critical Factors in Young (16-20 Year Old) Driver-Caused Vehicle Crashes(2017-10-08) Brown, David B.Item Large Truck and Bus Analysis for the State of Alabama 2011-2015(2017-11) Alabama Department of Transportation; University of Alabama Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS)Item Vehicle Defect IMPACT Analysis(2017-11-01) Brown, David B.Item Impaired Driving Special IMPACT Study(2017-12-15) Brown, David B.Item Efficiency and Emissions Characteristics of an HCCl Engine Fueled by Primary Reference Fuels(SAE International, 2018) Yang, Ruinan; Hariharan, Deivanayagam; Zilg, Steven; Mamalis, Sotirios; Lawler, Benjamin; State University of New York (SUNY) System; State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis article investigates the effects of various primary reference fuel (PRF) blends, compression ratios, and intake temperatures on the thermodynamics and performance of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCl) combustion in a Cooperative Fuels Research (CFR) engine. Combustion phasing was kept constant at a CA50 phasing of 5 degrees after top dead center (aTDC) and the equivalence ratio was kept constant at 0.3. Meanwhile, the compression ratio varied from 8:1 to 15:1 as the PRF blends ranged from pure n-heptane to nearly pure isooctane. The intake temperature was used to match CA50 phasing. In addition to the experimental results, a GT-Power model was constructed to simulate the experimental engine and the model was validated against the experimental data. The GT-Power model and simulation results were used to help analyze the energy flows and thermodynamic conditions tested in the experiment. The results indicate that an increase of compression ratio causes higher thermal efficiency and fuel conversion efficiency; however, at the same compression ratio, an increase in PRF number results in lower efficiency due to the required increase in intake temperature and the associated decrease in charge density. While the efficiency does increase with compression ratio, the results show that the effect of increased expansion work is partially offset by higher heat transfer losses and lower ratios of specific heats at higher compression ratios. The results indicate that the maximum pressure rise rate (MPRR) in HCCl significantly increases with compression ratio. Combustion efficiency shows a strong trend with peak temperature regardless of the PRF number or compression ratio, indicating that the CO-to-CO2 conversion is independent of the parent fuel chemistry in the case of the PRFs, whereas the unburned hydrocarbon emissions showed the opposite trend, depending mostly on the parent fuel's autoignition tendency.Item CARE IMPACT Study of Senior Driver Caused Traffic Crashes: 2013-2017 Data(2018-05-15) Brown, David B.The comparisons in this document are between those crashes that were caused by senior drivers (age 65 or older) compared to all other crashes. This enabled the characteristics for these crashes to surface so that traffic safety professionals can determine their magnitude and optimize senior driver safety programs to place emphasis on the most important factors. In many cases the comparison led to conclusions that were expected, being well established over the years. A very important general finding that confirms studies done by CAPS personnel from well over a decade ago is that senior drivers are relatively risk averse compared to younger drivers. This will be noticed in virtually all of the IMPACT comparisons below: the older driver red bars will be higher in those categories that generally involve lower risk. Examples include lower speeds, avoidance of late night driving and bad weather, and many other categories that will be noticed as risk-avoidance. Since these results should be well understood, they will not be discussed unless there some aspects of them that bear mentioning.Item Fuel consumption for various driving styles in conventional and hybrid electric vehicles: Integrating driving cycle predictions with fuel consumption optimization(Taylor & Francis, 2018-06-14) Rios-Torres, Jackeline; Liu, Jun; Khattak, AsadImproving fuel economy and lowering emissions are key societal goals. Standard driving cycles, pre-designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have long been used to estimate vehicle fuel economy in laboratory-controlled conditions. They have also been used to test and tune different energy management strategies for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). This paper aims to estimate fuel consumption for a conventional vehicle and a HEV using personalized driving cycles extracted from real-world data to study the effects of different driving styles and vehicle types on fuel consumption when compared to the estimates based on standard driving cycles. To do this, we extracted driving cycles for conventional vehicles and HEVs from a large-scale U.S. survey that contains real-world GPS-based driving records. Next, the driving cycles were assigned to one of three categories: volatile, normal, or calm. Then, the driving cycles were used along with a driver-vehicle simulation that captures driver decisions (vehicle speed during a trip), powertrain, and vehicle dynamics to estimate fuel consumption for conventional vehicles and HEVs with power-split powertrain. To further optimize fuel consumption for HEVs, the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS) is applied. The results show that depending on the driving style and the driving scenario, conventional vehicle fuel consumption can vary widely compared with standard EPA driving cycles. Specifically, conventional vehicle fuel consumption was 13% lower in calm urban driving, but almost 34% higher for volatile highway driving compared with standard EPA driving cycles. Interestingly, when a driving cycle is predicted based on the application of case-based reasoning and used to tune the power distribution in a hybrid electric vehicle, its fuel consumption can be reduced by up to 12% in urban driving. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.Item CARE IMPACT Study of Traffic Crashes Involving Aggressive Driving: 2013-2017 Data(2018-06-27) Brown, David B.Item CARE IMPACT Study of Traffic Crashes Involving Pedestrians: 2013-2017 Data(2018-08-01) Brown, David B.