IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ndtr04/208237.html

Why has Safety Improved at Rail-Highway Grade Crossings?

Author

Listed:
  • Mok, Shannon
  • Savage, Ian

Abstract

The number of collisions and fatalities at rail-highway intersections has declined significantly over the past thirty years, despite considerable increases in the volume of both rail and highway traffic. This paper disaggregates the improvement into its constituent causes. Negative binomial regressions are conducted on a pooled data set for 49 states from 1975 to 2001. The analysis concludes that about two-fifths of the decrease is due to factors such as reduced drunk driving and improved emergency medical response that have improved safety on all parts of the highway network. The installation of gates and/or flashing lights accounts for about a fifth of the reduction. The development of the “Operation Lifesaver” campaign, that seeks to inform the public on appropriate conduct at crossings, in the 1970s and early 1980s; and the installation of “ditch lights” on locomotives in the mid 1990s, each led to about a seventh of the reduction. Finally, about a tenth is due to closure of crossings resulting from line abandonments or consolidation of little-used crossings.

Suggested Citation

  • Mok, Shannon & Savage, Ian, 2004. "Why has Safety Improved at Rail-Highway Grade Crossings?," 45th Annual Transportation Research Forum, Evanston, Illinois, March 21-23, 2004 208237, Transportation Research Forum.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:ndtr04:208237
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.208237
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/208237/files/2004_ImproveSafety_paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.208237?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Savage, Ian, 1998. "The economics of railroad safety," 40th Annual Transportation Research Forum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 29-31, 1998 311958, Transportation Research Forum.
    2. Hausman, Jerry & Hall, Bronwyn H & Griliches, Zvi, 1984. "Econometric Models for Count Data with an Application to the Patents-R&D Relationship," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 909-938, July.
    3. A. Colin Cameron & Pravin K. Trivedi, 1986. "Econometric models based on count data. Comparisons and applications of some estimators and tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 29-53, January.
    4. Savage, Ian, 1998. "The economics of railroad safety," Transportation Research Forum Proceedings 1990s 311958, Transportation Research Forum.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. T.R.L. Fry & R.D. Brooks & Br. Comley & J. Zhang, 1993. "Economic Motivations for Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variable Models," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(2), pages 193-205, June.
    2. Moffatt, Peter G., 1997. "Exploiting a matrix identity in the computation of the efficient score test for overdispersion in the Poisson regression model," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 75-79, February.
    3. Thomas Bolli & Martin Woerter, 2013. "Technological Diversification and Innovation Performance," KOF Working papers 13-336, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    4. Becker, Gary S. & Rubinstein, Yona, 2011. "Fear and the response to terrorism: an economic analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121740, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Gary King, 1989. "A Seemingly Unrelated Poisson Regression Model," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 17(3), pages 235-255, February.
    6. Christopher J. W. Zorn, 1998. "An Analytic and Empirical Examination of Zero-Inflated and Hurdle Poisson Specifications," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 368-400, February.
    7. Maldonado, Jorge H. & González-Vega, Claudio, 2008. "Impact of Microfinance on Schooling: Evidence from Poor Rural Households in Bolivia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2440-2455, November.
    8. Niklas Elert, 2014. "What determines entry? Evidence from Sweden," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 53(1), pages 55-92, August.
    9. Melissa A. Schilling & Corey C. Phelps, 2007. "Interfirm Collaboration Networks: The Impact of Large-Scale Network Structure on Firm Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(7), pages 1113-1126, July.
    10. Christian Gouriéroux & Alain Monfort, 1997. "Modèles de comptage semi-paramétriques," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 73(1), pages 525-550.
    11. van Zeebroeck, Nicolas & van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno & Guellec, Dominique, 2009. "Claiming more: the Increased Voluminosity of Patent Applications and its Determinants," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1006-1020, July.
    12. Francisco Ledesma & Manuel Navarro & Jorge Perez-Rodriguez, 2005. "Return to tourist destination. Is it reputation, after all?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(18), pages 2055-2065.
    13. YoungJun Kim & Nicholas S. Vonortas, 2006. "Determinants of technology licensing: the case of licensors," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 235-249.
    14. Ulf‐ G. Gerdtham, 1997. "Equity in Health Care Utilization: Further Tests Based on Hurdle Models and Swedish Micro Data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(3), pages 303-319, May.
    15. Harpreet Singh & David Kryscynski & Xinxin Li & Ram Gopal, 2016. "Pipes, pools, and filters: How collaboration networks affect innovative performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(8), pages 1649-1666, August.
    16. Carole Roan Gresenz & Jeanette A. Rogowski & Jose Escarce, 2004. "Healthcare Markets, the Safety Net and Access to Care Among the Uninsured," NBER Working Papers 10799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Fleming, Lee & Sorenson, Olav, 2001. "Technology as a complex adaptive system: evidence from patent data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1019-1039, August.
    18. M. Wedel & W. S. Desarbo & J. R. Bult & V. Ramaswamy, 1993. "A latent class poisson regression model for heterogeneous count data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 397-411, October.
    19. Podivinsky, Jan & Stewart, Geoff, 2003. "Why are labour-managed firms so rare? An analysis of entry using UK panel data," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0402, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    20. Meisner, Craig & Wang, Hua & Laplante, Benoit, 2006. "Welfare measurement bias in household and on-site surveying of water-based recreation : an application to Lake Sevan, Armenia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3932, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ndtr04:208237. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://trforum.org/annual-forum/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.