The Effect of Rutting Damage on Safety of Roadways in Horizontal Curves: with Focus on Lateral Acceleration

Along with human and vehicle factors, pavement conditions are recognized as one of the most important factors contributing to accidents and consequently reduced safety. Various studies have been conducted on the effect of different factors in reducing accident rates; however, in this study, the effect of rutting damage as a common type of distress on road safety was investigated. For this purpose, various effective parameters in the study including rutting depth ( R D ) and rutting width ( R W ) in horizontal curves at different longitudinal slope conditions ( G ) and in different conditions of driver’s behavior, including speed ( S ) and steering on lateral acceleration of different vehicles were tested in two scenarios with braking (WB) and no-braking (NB) using dynamic vehicle modeling. To model different conditions, a total of 486 scenarios were evaluated for 3D simulation of the effect of different parameters on lateral acceleration for different design vehicles. Finally, a multiple linear regression model for lateral acceleration of different vehicles was presented based on different parameters. The results showed that R D and G reduced road safety by increasing lateral acceleration in both WB and NB scenarios; however, by increasing R W and S , the lateral acceleration of the vehicles decreased, and as a result, road safety increased. Also, the WB scenario had relatively the same lateral acceleration as the NB scenario; therefore, road safety was independent of the braking process in this case.