Abstract
Improvements in rail-highway grade crossing safety have resulted from engineering, law enforcement, and educating the public about the risks and the actions they should take. The primary form of the latter is a campaign called Operation Lifesaver which started in the 1970s. This paper uses a negative binomial regression to estimate whether variations in Operation Lifesaver activity across states and from year-to-year in individual states are related to the number of collisions and fatalities at crossings. Annual data on the experience in 46 states from 1996 to 2002 are used. The analysis finds that increasing the amount of educational activity will reduce the number of collisions with a point elasticity of -0.11, but the effect on the number of deaths cannot be concluded with statistical certainty.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 310-316 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Accident Analysis and Prevention |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2006 |
Funding
The organization is funded by agencies of the federal Department of Transportation, the railroads, and from various state and local sources. As a volunteer-based organization, the budget is quite modest. The total funding of the national office and all of the state organizations, including gifts in kind, is less than $5 million a year. Each state organization is an independent entity, and the level and type of activity varies.
Keywords
- Accident analysis
- Operation Lifesaver
- Public education
- Rail-highway crossings
- United States
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
- Human Factors and Ergonomics
