Road Weather Condition Estimation Using Fixed and Mobile Based Cameras.

Automated interpretation and understanding of the driving environment using image processing is a challenging task, as most current vision-based systems are not designed to work in dynamically-changing and naturalistic real-world settings. For instance, road weather condition classification using a camera is a challenge due to high variance in weather, road layout, and illumination conditions. Most transportation agencies, within the U.

An empirical analysis of farm vehicle crash injury severities on Iowa's public road system.

Farm vehicle crashes are a major safety concern for farmers as well as all other users of the public road system in agricultural states. Using data on farm vehicle crashes that occurred on Iowa's public roads between 2004 and 2006, we estimate a multinomial logit model to identify crash-, farm vehicle-, and driver-specific factors that determine farm vehicle crash injury severity outcomes. Estimation findings indicate that there are crash patterns (rear-end manner of collision; single-vehicle crash; farm vehicle crossed the centerline or median) and conditions (obstructed vision and crash in rural area; dry road, dark lighting, speed limit 55 mph or higher, and harvesting season), as well as farm vehicle and driver-contributing characteristics (old farm vehicle, young farm vehicle driver), where targeted intervention can help reduce the severity of crash outcomes.