Evaluating the effectiveness of law enforcement in reducing truck crashes for a rural mountainous freeway in Wyoming
Anas Alrejjal, Milhan Moomen, Khaled Ksaibati
Abstract
Interstate 80 (I-80) in Wyoming has one of the highest truck traffic in the United States. Truck-related crashes are more likely to occur on this highway. The Wyoming Highway Patrol (WHP) administers traffic citations to deter traffic violations across roadways and enhance traffic safety. This paper investigates police citations’ influence on truck-related crashes and identifies the high-risk locations and times for crash hotspots. It offers useful insights on how citations could prevent crashes. To achieve this, spatial and temporal techniques were applied to examine law enforcement’s impact on I-80. Different datasets were compiled including crash, citation, traffic, geometry and weather data. A noticeable difference was reported between the locations of crashes and citations. Negative Binomial (NB) and Zero Inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) models were developed to analyze the dataset. The results showed how effectively citations could improve traffic safety on a year-quarter scale by providing updated crash and enforcement data.