Calibrating the Highway Safety Manual Predictive Models for Multilane Rural Highway Segments in Saudi Arabia

Crash prediction models (CPM) are mostly used for network screening in the road safety management process. The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) offers consistent and reliable CPMs for various roadway facilities that are commonly known as safety performance functions (SPFs). SPFs are statistical regression models that estimate the expected crash frequencies by crash severity, type, and facility types as a function of highway geometric characteristics and traffic exposure. They are vital in identifying high-frequency crash locations and assessing the effectiveness of safety countermeasures. HSM SPFs were originally developed using data collected from a selected few states in the USA. When applied to different jurisdictions, agencies can either develop local SPFs or calibrate the existing HSM base SPFs for local conditions depending on various trade-offs. This study aims to calibrate HSM-default SPFs for multilanes rural divided highway segments using three years of crash data (2017–2019) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). In this regard, two highways (NHWY-80 and NHWY-85) in the eastern region were considered for the analysis. Crash and traffic data were procured from the MOT (Ministry of Transport), Riyadh, KSA. Geometric data was collected from MOT as well as google earth and field surveys. Calibration procedure as recommended by HSM was followed to obtain the local calibration factors. The Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) calibrator tool was used for the analysis. SPFs calibration results revealed that HSM predictive methodology consistently overpredicts all types of crashes (i.e., total, fatal and injury, and property damage crashes) on both highways. The estimated calibration factors ranged from 0.53 to 0.78. Various goodness of fit (GOF) measures (like MAD, MSPE, MPB) were used for quality assessment of calibrated SPFs. Methods used in this study could be beneficially practiced in any jurisdiction. Calibrated SPFs provide a favorable alternative and replacement of HSM-default SPFs, thereby making the crash predictions more accurate and thus helps in better decision-making related to highway safety.