Stop lines are ubiquitous, but do they really impact intersection safety? Prior to this project, no long-term studies on intersection safety with stop lines had been completed. This project was developed with two parallel research efforts: a safety study and an observational study. The safety study was developed to address stop lines’ effects over the long term and used crash data from five cities’ stop-controlled intersections to perform regression and see if stop lines actually influenced safety. The observational study was developed to determine if stop lines have an effect on driver behavior at intersections and to look at where drivers were stopping. Video was collected at 16 different intersections before and after a stop line was painted. The safety study and observational study showed that stop lines did not have a significant impact on driver behavior or intersection safety, but other factors like speed limits and sight distance did. Implications for practice include carefully examining sight distance at the intended stopping point to ensure drivers have adequate sight distance in both directions. If sight distance is not adequate, moving the intended stop location or reconsidering whether the intersection should have signage -- stop or yield -- or be uncontrolled could yield better driver compliance and safety.

The Development of Crash Modification Factors program studied the safety performance of various stop-controlled intersections for the Evaluation of Low-Cost Safety Improvements Pooled Fund Study. This study evaluated the safety effectiveness of multiple low-cost treatments at stop-controlled intersections. Improvements included basic signing and pavement markings. This strategy is intended to reduce the frequency and severity of crashes at stop-controlled intersections by alerting drivers to the presence and type of approaching intersection. Geometric, traffic, and crash data were obtained at three- and four-legged, two- and four-lane major road, and urban and rural stop-controlled intersections in South Carolina. To account for potential selection bias and regression to the mean, an empirical Bayesian before-after analysis was conducted, using reference groups of untreated intersections with similar characteristics to the treated sites. The analysis also controlled for changes in traffic volumes throughout time and time trends in crash counts unrelated to the treatments. The aggregate results indicate reductions for all crash types analyzed (i.e., total, fatal and injury, rear-end, right-angle, and nighttime). The reductions are statistically significant at the 95-percent confidence level for all crash types. For all crash types combined, the crash modification factors (CMFs) are 0.917 for all severities and 0.899 for fatal and injury crashes. The CMFs for rear-end, right-angle, and nighttime crashes are 0.933, 0.941, and 0.853, respectively. The benefit-cost ratio estimated with conservative cost and service life assumptions is 12.4 to 1 for total crashes at unsignalized intersections. The results suggest that the multiple low-cost treatments, even with conservative assumptions on cost, service life, and the value of a statistical life, can be cost effective.

Technical summary of the FHA report FHWA-HRT-17-086 program that studied the safety performance of various stop-controlled intersections for the Evaluation of Low-Cost Safety Improvements Pooled Fund Study. This study evaluated the safety effectiveness of multiple low-cost treatments at stop-controlled intersections.

"The purpose of this document is to present information on suggested effective, low-cost intersection countermeasures developed using intersection safety research results and input from an intersection safety expert panel. These low-cost countermeasures can be applied to a large number of intersections with a high frequency of crashes using a systematic approach. The net impact of such an approach can produce significant reductions in statewide intersection crashes, fatalities, and serious injuries. Low-cost countermeasures are defined as those ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 per intersection"--Page 4

Evaluation of blank-out signs at intersections where traffic signals are in a flashing mode.