 Welcome to the Federal Highway Administration's informational DVD on shoulder and centerline Rumble Strips and Rumble Stripes. The purpose of this video, Rumble Strips, a sound investment, is to introduce you to a cost-effective treatment that has been proven to provide results by saving lives. On an average day in the United States, one roadway injury occurs every 43 seconds and one roadway departure fatality every 23 minutes. Runoff the road crashes are truly a national problem. About one-third of all fatal crashes are single vehicle runoff the road crashes. That statistics becomes even more alarming when you look at the rural areas. I think we need to get away from that philosophy that deaths on our highway are acceptable. They're not. They're just as tragic as the homicides and suicides and those kinds of tragedies. The National Safety Council estimates that the financial cost for roadway departure crashes is more than $100 billion per year. This figure includes costs covering property damage, lost wages and productivity, medical expenses, administrative expenses and employee costs to name a few. Something must be done. So let's start from the beginning. What actually causes a roadway departure? It could be an intentional maneuver to avoid an imminent hazard such as another vehicle or a foreign object on the road. Or it could be due to an environmental condition such as sliding off the road after hitting a patch of ice. Or driving off the edge of the pavement in thick fog or smoke. Or veering around an animal that has darted out into the roadway. There are always the unintentional reasons as well. Maybe a vehicle has a tire blowout or some other type of malfunction. But the most lethal type and fortunately also the most preventable and correctable are the drift off the road crashes. These deadly departures can normally be attributed to driver fatigue including fatigue induced by alcohol and drugs, drowsiness, inattentiveness, carelessness or just plain distraction. Drowsy drivers are much harder to identify and may not themselves recognize the danger that you're putting themselves in other motorists in. They don't realize sleep is not an expendable part of their lives that could mean the difference between life and death. The life-saving effectiveness of Rumble Stripes. In fact the Federal Highway Administration's goal along with that of state departments of transportation, county and city highway agencies is to educate drivers on the second chance that Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes provide. Since many of the causes of drift off the road crashes were believed to be correctable, individual state transportation and road authorities began experimenting with applications of Rumble Stripes. One of the things that came to our attention that was being done in Pennsylvania at the time they were experimenting with it was shoulder Rumble Stripes to try to alert drivers who were sleepy, drowsy or otherwise inattentive that they were running off the road. So in 1990 we did a short one-mile test zone down around Kingston on the Thruway. That was an area over a three-year period in a one mile zone they had 19 fall asleep crashes in the three years prior to 1990 and in three years after 1990 in that one mile zone we had zero. Road authorities have discovered that the use of shoulder Rumble Stripes provides the opportunity to alert the drowsy or distracted driver but who else can they help? For one Rumble Stripes provide the means to warn drivers who may have drifted out of the travel lanes due to changing weather conditions such as wind, fog, rain, sleet or snow. But don't just take our word for it listen to what happened to Chuck Benson a professional truck driver. Winter driving you can't always see the edge of the road sometimes you can't even see the travel lane that you're in. As soon as you get off that shoulder a little bit you hear that noise that vibration you know exactly where you're at so it gives you awareness of that. You could also have that in rainy weather or foggy weather where you don't have a clear view of the roadway. Now that we've discussed the ways in which Rumble Stripes can help improve the safety of our nation's highways let's take a deeper look at how they achieve these goals. So can we reduce runoff the road injury and fatality crashes? The solution is to identify and implement both reactive and proactive measures. Reactive measures include removing fixed objects from the clear zone or shielding or making them forgiving. This practice evolved in the 1960s and has been successfully used by state transportation and road agencies ever since. Road shoulder and centerline Rumble Stripes are a proactive measure as they actually help to prevent drivers from leaving the travel lanes of the main roadway. With a growing record of independently documented state and federal studies on the effectiveness of Rumble Stripes an increase in the installation of Rumble Stripes on many high volume roads throughout the nation has occurred over the past 10 years. As a result of the effectiveness of Rumble Stripes efforts have recently led to the installation of Rumble Stripes on many two-lane rural roadways as well. In recent years a further enhancement to Rumble Stripes has been implemented in many jurisdictions the Rumble Stripe. A Rumble Stripe consists of painting a line over the top of a Rumble Stripe. This stripe adds a visual element to the sound and vibration of the Rumble Stripe. In a rigorous analysis of crash data from Minnesota performed in 2006 there was a 13% reduction in total single vehicle runoff the road crashes and an 18% reduction for injury single vehicle runoff the road crashes. This was realized after installing shoulder Rumble Stripes on 183 miles of two-lane rural highways. This analysis was supported by several studies which all reported reductions in runoff the road crashes after the implementation of shoulder Rumble Stripes. The success of shoulder Rumble Stripes appears to have led several states to require the incorporation of shoulder Rumble Stripes on 3R projects that is resurfacing, restoration and rehabilitation on limited access roadways. Centerline Rumble Stripes have also been shown to reduce the number of centerline crossover crashes. In a study performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2003 using data from several states it was found that there was an overall 25% reduction in head-on and opposing direction side swipe injury collisions. Now that we've discussed the shoulder and centerline Rumble Stripes ability to save lives you may ask what is the financial cost for these treatments? We think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Many studies on shoulder Rumble Stripes show a very high benefit cost ratio which makes them among the most cost-effective safety treatments available. This makes shoulder Rumble Stripes more cost-effective than any other safety treatments such as guardrails, culvert end treatments and slope flattening. In a main Department of Transportation survey of 50 state DOTs a benefit cost ratio of 50 to 1 for milled Rumble Stripes on rural interstates nationwide was identified. The one drawback the Transportation and Road Authorities have found with respect to Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes is the potential for noise issues especially within an urban environment. The rumbling noise caused by vehicles running over the strips can be disturbing to surrounding residential neighborhoods. However treatments exist to help mitigate this. Let's take a look at some potential solutions. There was a concern on the through ways part because of complaints that we received about the noise that the Rumble Stripes caused. In response to those complaints we did go out we did observe that in fact they were legitimate and as a result of that we originally had placed the shoulder Rumble Stripes four inches off the edge of pavement. Now with any installation and the old ones we went back and redid them on the right shoulder we placed them 16 inches off the edge of pavement on a left shoulder 12 inches off the edge of pavement and we found that that significantly reduces the inadvertent hits of people just drifting slightly off the pavement. Now that we've shown how Rumble Stripes can be used to help increase the level of safety and reduce crashes let's address how the Rumble Stripes work. When a vehicle's tire is driven along a Rumble Strip an audible rumbling is produced along with a noticeable vibration in the vehicle. When the Rumble Stripes are properly designed and installed the noise and vibration produced by the Stripes can be very effective in providing motorists with a warning to alert them to correct their vehicle's direction and place themselves back within the lane. Some road authorities have concerns about the potential negative effects that Rumble Stripes might have on the stability of road shoulders. These concerns however have not been substantiated. In fact many jurisdictions found that when properly installed Rumble Stripes do not undermine the roadway shoulder nor do they require increased maintenance. Similarly there has been no evidence of maintenance problems with respect to the pavement joint in conjunction with centerline Rumble Stripes. Concerns have also been expressed about the use of Rumble Stripes and Stripes and their effects on motorcycles, bicycles and their riders. While not all Rumble Strip designs are compatible with these vehicles guidance from Axto and some state DOTs is available to aid in the design of bicycle friendly Rumble Stripes and Stripes for use on non-access controlled highways. Now that we've presented how the Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes actually work let's get into some details about their design. Because there are a number of different ways in which a Rumble Strip can be designed and implemented they can be broken down into groups including milled, rolled, formed and raised. Milled and rolled are the most widely used type of Rumble Stripes so we will concentrate on those. So how are they designed? Milled Rumble Stripes are designed so they can be installed on existing road shoulders or on new road shoulders. A milling machine cuts individual strips into the roadway by shaving down the asphalt. Rolled Rumble Stripes however can only be installed on a new road shoulder before it has cured. This is because the strips are actually pressed or rolled into the asphalt using a rolling compactor with a specially designed roller. While rolled Rumble Stripes are in use in some jurisdictions in various tests and applications it has been found that milled Rumble Stripes are more effective than rolled. We have found the milled Rumble Stripes are probably the most effective and the most widely used here in the Northeast. A Virginia study showed that the milled were 12.6 times rougher than the rolled Rumble Stripes. The study also showed that the milled were 3.4 times the decibel level of rolled. Rumble Stripes can be painted over the top of milled or rolled Rumble Stripes. These stripes add a visual cue to augment the vibratory and auditory aspects of the Rumble Stripe. The basic design of a Rumble Stripe can be explained in five elements. Spacing, longitudinal width, transverse width, tire drop and depth. Centerline Rumble Stripes are very similar in design to that of shoulder Rumble Stripes. However they're placed down the middle of the roadway. We hope that we've shown you how Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes are cost-effective tools that should be considered by all transportation and road authorities in the United States. With benefit cost ratios between 30 to 1 and 60 to 1 Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes have been proven to save lives by increasing driver awareness. Do not require additional maintenance and have other added benefits such as being a positive guidance tool in poor visibility. If you would like to explore Rumble Stripes and Rumble Stripes in greater detail please visit FHWA's website or type FHWA Rumble Stripe into your favorite internet search engine. Thank you for taking the time to view this presentation.