Research on Express Highway Safety Features and Improvement Measures

Chinese express highway has following characteristics: incomplete control of access, divided directions, multiple lanes, heavy volume of traffic, high speed, severe lateral disturbance, etc. These lead to the highest traffic accident rate and death rate, which makes these express highways become the most unsafe highways in China. This study focuses on express highway to analysis its representative safety features, including access management, speed control and anti-dazzle facility installation, then points out improvement measures. Through optimizing road cross-section layout, controlling access density, installing traffic control facilities, the access management can be realized. To realize speed control, speed buffer zone could be installed between two adjacent speed zones with different speed limit values. It is suggested that anti-dazzle facilities should be demolished at small radius curve to eliminate obscure vision.