PURPOSES : A highway operates in a continuous flow and has restricted access. When an accident occurs on a highway, the impact on the traffic flow is large. In particular, an accident that occurs in a tunnel has a more significant impact than an accident that occurs in a general section. Accordingly, the management agency classifies the tunnel as a dangerous section and manages a tunnel of more than 1000 m using the Tunnel Transportation Management System. The purpose of this study was to select dangerous tunnels that require intensive management for the efficient management of highway tunnels.
METHODS : In this study, for the selection of dangerous tunnels for expressways, all highway tunnels were classified into five clusters by characteristics. The traffic accident severity — equivalent property damage only (EPDO) — for each tunnel cluster was derived through a traffic accident analysis. Based on the severity analysis results, the safety performance function (SPF) for each cluster was established, and the accident risk tunnel was selected based on the potential safety improvement (PSI) value of each tunnel calculated using the empirical Bayes (EB) method for each tunnel cluster.
RESULTS : As a result of the analysis, accident risk tunnels were selected based on the PSI values of the tunnels for each highway tunnel group. Finally, 55 hazardous tunnels were identified as hazardous tunnels: 13 tunnels in Cluster 1, 3 tunnels in Cluster 2, 15 tunnels in Cluster 3, 18 tunnels in Cluster 4, and 6 tunnels in Cluster 5.
CONCLUSIONS : After classifying all 1232 tunnels on the highway into five clusters according to tunnel characteristics, EPDO analysis was performed for each tunnel cluster. To this end, the SPF for each cluster was constructed, and accident risk tunnels were selected based on the PSI value of each tunnel calculated using the EB method for each tunnel cluster. The tunnel cluster was classified as a typical tunnel type. As a result, most of the first and second values were calculated from cluster E (long tunnel cluster).