Roadside Inspection Data and Crash Data Analysis


CAIT project no.: 209 RU8870

Fiscal Year: 2006/2007

Status: Final

Rutgers-CAIT Author(s): Mohsen Jafari

External Author(s): Thomas Harcar

Sponsor(s): NJDOT, FHWA-USDOT

Summary:

The New Jersey Department of Transportation Bureau of Trucking Service (NJDOT- BTS) had requested a review of inspection and crash data to determine frequent lateness and erroneous reporting by inspectors and law enforcement officers. In response, the Rutgers CAIT team conducted this research to fulfill the NJDOT-BTS requirements. The project had two main objectives: 1) providing an independent and quantitative assessment of crash and inspection data contained in the FMCSA database (SAFETYNET); 2) development of human-centered decision support system. Our technical approach included a thorough analysis of inspection and crash databases, site visits and field studies, and interviews with stakeholders and domain experts. Our assessment of inspection and crash data concluded that data quality and integrity can be significantly improved by streamlining the underlying data collection, hand-off and storage processes, and by using advanced technologies. We also prepared the functional specification of a decision support system that the NJDOT-BTS is planning to use for planning and decision making. Finally, this report included a preliminary analysis on commercial motor vehicles crashes to identify locations with most crash incidents in the NJ roadway network.