Talking Traffic

Last week I blogged about the Northside HOV Exit in Atlanta where the Bluffton University bus crash occurred. Since then, the Georgia Department of Transportation has installed some new pavement markings. Let’s take a look!

If you click through to the Flickr pages of the individual pictures, you’ll find some notes I placed on them

You can see the most obvious new feature for pavement markings in the images above. The giant Interstate 75 shield that has been placed on the roadway was a shock when we first drove over it. It’s not something I’m used to seeing on the roadway. I don’t know the exact dimensions of the shield, but it looks to me like nine feet wide by twenty feet long (or so). The Large SOUTH pavement marking is also new, leading up to that shield.

Another new pavement marking installed is the EXIT ONLY words and attendant raised pavement markers just on the left side of the dotted yellow stripe. You can see the white stripe, although you can’t read the words, in the second picture above. This is new.

Everything else you see has been in place for over a year. If you click through to the Flickr page on this photo, I’ve notated everything.

In the next few months, new overhead signs will be going up which will be in line with the MUTCD¹.

Will this additional striping prevent all future accidental exits here at the Northside Drive HOV exit? I don’t think so. At least, not 100%. It will help; that I do not disagree with. Hopefully it will help enough to prevent another Bluffton.

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¹: There have been some significant changes in HOV-related signing in the past few years, significantly affected by the Bluffton crash. If you want to read the true skinny, go to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (2003 Revision 2) and read starting at section 2E.59. Also be aware that another significant revision to the entire manual is under work, slated for publication this year.

Topics: NHTSA Fatality Statistics 2008, Speed Humps, Bicycles and Pedestrians in the Motorized Environment

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A set of business owners on Kauai island in Hawaii have put together their own transportation stimulus and fixed a bridge that needed fixing:

So Slack, other business owners and residents made the decision not to sit on their hands and wait for state money that many expected would never come. Instead, they pulled together machinery and manpower and hit the ground running March 23. Video Watch the volunteers repairing the road.

And after only eight days, all of the repairs were done, Pleas said.

I’m fascinated by this. Not because I don’t think this kind of thing can happen, but because I’m well familiar with the bureaucracy that could have made it not happen.

Image by unk’s dump truck on flickr

Ethics Statements
There was a question posted on one of the Traffic Engineering listservs I’m a part of that sent me out to read (again) the various Canons of Ethics in the professional societies I’m associated with.

I have two opinions about these various statements of professional ethics: One, they’re absolutely necessary to maintain our profession as a profession and two, they’re amazingly over detailed.

There is a lot of good stuff in those documents^1,2,3,4, but it brings to mind a saying which, paraphrased, says “If you have to write down your ethical standards, you’re already lost.”

For the record, I don’t agree with that statement. At least, not for broad overarching ethics guidelines. For example, all the engineering ethics statements that I’m associated with begin with:

Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties

That is an excellent statement that sums up the entire raison d’etre of the Professional Engineer. Every young engineer, whether they intend to become a Professional Engineer or not should know and be able to quote that statement.

Other Canons, as they’re generally called, which are consistent between the various documents are briefly summarized as:

• Act in a faithful manner to your clients
• Act in a professional manner to your competitors
• Don’t break laws
• Be a good engineer⁵

Getting back to my earlier statement about how I think the various documents were too detailed, it depends on your perspective. There are two basic times in an engineer’s life when these docs should be reviewed and the ethical standards serve different purposes depending on which phase you’re in:

Just starting out
You, as a beginning engineer, might not realize that certain activities are considered unethical by your professional community. The one I always bring up as an example is moonlighting⁶. It is unethical to practice moonlighting because the engineer in question is able to underbid a non-moonlighting engineer, thereby depriving him or her of work. This falls under “Engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall not compete unfairly with others.” ²

Another basic example of unethical practice which may not be obvious to the beginning engineer is allowing “authority” to dictate your professional judgment. “Engineers shall advise their employers or clients when, as a result of their studies, they believe a project will not be successful.”¹ Seems obvious, right? However it’s easy for a person to be persuaded to shade their conclusions or recommendations because that’s what the client wants.

The difficulties of beginning engineers is broadened the cut back of ethics classes in colleges nationwide. Ethics is most often an elective class, not a requirement. This leads to engineers being required to learn their professional responsibilities on the job, which might dump them into court. This is why professional societies need detailed ethics statements.

Experienced Engineer
The experienced engineer does not need specific examples of unethical behavior. She will have already gone through the learning process mentioned above and will need only refreshers of what needs to be watched for. To that end, I heartily congratulate the State of Texas’ Board of Professional Engineers for requiring that 1 hour of the required yearly continuing education be in ethics⁷. Knowing the broader aspects of what is a required activity or what she is required to avoid is paramount to every engineer, but the experienced engineer does not want to spend time reading a document that appears to have been drafted by lawyers.¹ That is why professional societies need a short ethics statements. Preferably with bullet points. Everybody likes bullet points.

A Better Document
You’ll notice that I have now called for both a brief and detailed ethics statement. Which brings me to the call to arms for committees who are slated to update their various ethics documents: Leverage the two-tier approach and use the web. I think that of the documents listed in footnotes 1 through 4, ASCE gets it best by listing their seven canons right up at the top of the document, then following up with “Guidelines to Practice Under the Fundamental Canons of Ethics”².

Future ethics documents should be web-based, with internal links (perhaps even wikis). Five to 10 bold statements, starting with the most important one concerning public welfare, and then deeper discussion behind the links of what is an acceptable/unacceptable action under particular scenarios. I’ll draw a parallel to the United States Golf Association which lists their Rules of Golf, plus has a separate section for Decisions⁸ and follows up with an online quiz to test your knowledge of the nitty gritty details.

This is what I’ll push for if I’m ever on one of those committees. This will allow experienced engineers to review the guidelines quickly and for new engineers to deeply learn what is meant by “unfair competition” and other important details.

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¹: Institute of Transportation Engineers Canon of Ethics for Members
²: American Society of Civil Engineers Code of Ethics
³: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society Policy: Ethics
⁴: IEEE Code of Ethics
⁵: The various documents I’m referencing go into more detail about what all that entails, on a “year to year” basis. I was going to say “day to day” but it’s not so detailed as to list specific no-nos.
⁶: Moonlighting is the practice of cost-competing for extra work while employed in a full-time job elsewhere. The moonlighting engineer can underbid a competitor due to having their overhead expenses taken care of by their employer. Moonlighting is not unethical always, it depends on the circumstances. I’m primarily aware of this ethical standard due to my time as a mechanical engineer where work was less likely to be awarded on Qualifications standards.
⁷: Although I will chastise them for allowing “(d) A minimum of 1 PDH per renewal period must be in the area of professional ethics, roles and responsibilities of professional engineering, or review of the Texas Engineering Practice Act and Board Rules [ed. emphasis].” Reviewing board rules isn’t a strong indicator of ethical practices, in my opinion.
⁸: A Decision is the official determination of a questionable rules situation by the USGA.

Image credit to Southbound_07

Today is the anniversary of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union forces at Appomattox. This is a significant date in US history and it also marks a reflection point on the history of transportation. The American Civil War was arguably the first “modern” war. The advent of the cheap rifle and the minié ball produced a level of casualties not seen in the Napoleonic era. Another addition to this conflict was the widespread use of the railroad to move troops and supplies.

In some respects, the war was entirely about securing bases of supply and production. The paramount example of this is Sherman’s drive on Atlanta. The goal of the campaign was to seize Atlanta and eliminate it’s usefulness to the Confederacy as a railroad hub and production facility. It is also no coincidence that Sherman moved from Chattanooga to Atlanta always following the Western & Atlantic railroad, which was the only way he could supply his troops. The Battle of Appomattox occurred because Lee wished to resupply his army there. Unfortunately for him, Union forces got there first and burned the trains that were waiting. The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the entire war, was situated there because Lee was looking for shoes for his army.

The South was hampered in its war fighting capability by unstandardized railroad guages (width’s between the rails) across the states. The North, while having some of the same problem, had many more rails of the same guage and were therefore able to move railroad cars around more easily.

Today is a day to remember, whether you supported the Southern Cause or not. But also remember that railroads and other transport helped to determine the outcome of the war.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA - pronounced nit’ suh) announced the preliminary 2008 statistics for Fatal Crashes in the United States (report, pdf). According to projections, traffic fatalities fell to 37,313, down from 41,059 in 2007. That is excellent news!

Similarly the fatality rate fell to 1.28 from 1.36. This rate is measured in fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, and as I’m sure you’re aware from the news media (and my humble services here) vehicle miles traveled also fell last year.

The reduction in fatalities is being reported as correlated with increased seat belt use across the nation. Everyone is careful to not actually state that seat belt use is fixing the problem, but in this case I’m willing to give them a pass for using statistics to lie to you. It is highly probable that increased seat belt use is a causal factor¹ in the reduction of fatal crashes but it is a difficult supposition to prove. Other factors that may be causing fatalities to drop is reduced response time for medial personnel², increased use of graduated drivers licenses for teens and/or safer vehicles.

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¹: See “Correlation does not imply causation”
²: See Golden Hour

You may recall from March 2007 the Bluffton University baseball team bus that mistakenly exited the interstate in Atlanta on a left-hand ramp, failed to recognize the stop condition at the top of the ramp and crashed through the barrier wall on the opposite side of the cross road, falling to the interstate and killing seven.

It has happened again, thankfully without any crashes or injuries. A bus driver thought that the left-hand exit was a continuation of the through lane and took the ramp, but the increased signage, striping and raised reflective pavement markers brought to his attention that he should stop.

The question here is, what to do? You might think from that AJC story I linked that the Georgia Dept. of Transportation is being lackadaisical about this problem, but I assure you they are not! I don’t have any good before/after images of the exit ramp signage and striping but if you were familiar with the road, you’d realize that it was a night and day difference. And there is a project in the works to put in large overhead guidesigns at all of the HOV exits around town.

Yet despite the extremely over-signed-and-marked left-hand exit at Northside Drive, another bus driver made the same mistake. Why?

From my own experience driving that stretch of HOV lane, it’s easy to see how you might do it. The road is in a slight left turn at that location and if you are following the left edgeline, you might just drift into the exit lane and proceed up the ramp. GDOT has used a dotted white stripe to indicate that the edgeline continues across the ramp exit, but I can still see how the mistake might be made.

However, let’s not forget that despite the driver error in this case, the signage was sufficient to alert him to the dangerous condition and the bus was stopped safely at the stop sign. I think that’s a win, don’t you?

171,000 vehicles per day passed this spot in 2007, according to GDOT’s coverage traffic counts. Extrapolating that to today means 124 million vehicles have gone through. Using some guesses of 0.5% bus traffic and perhaps a third of those using the HOV lane, that means 208,000 buses have passed this exit and only two (that we know of) have incorrectly evaluated the situation. That’s 0.0009 percent of the buses making a bad call.

Could this ramp have been designed better? You betcha! Are signs and striping going to “solve” the problem? Probably not. Unless you define the problem as “keep people from dying by driving over the top of Northside drive bridge thinking it’s I-75″. That I think is already solved. If you define the problem as “keep people from taking this ramp, thinking it’s I-75″ then I expect to hear of more cases in the future.