Decision aid for allocation of transportation funds to roadside safety enhancement

Each year, due to the uncontrolled exit of vehicles from the roadway and hitting roadside obstacles -especially rollovers on embankments-huge costs are imposed on communities. For the reduction of such costs, different safety improvement programs may be implemented; for example guard installations, embankment slope reduction and/or the roadside clear zone enhancement. But the real problem always is the scarcity of available resources and how to allocate such scarce resources among the proposed alternatives and programs. In this research-work, by developing a specific approach, the optimized technique for the allocation of financial resources for safety improvement of roadside embankments is presented. Additionally, by developing special graphs, such facility is provided for planners and designers in different sections of road construction and maintenance to make optimum decisions either to install protective guards or to flatten roadside slopes. The results might also be beneficial for the correction and/or completion of the present related code of standards.