Rumble Strip and Its Impact on Vehicle Speed, Emissions and Fuel Consumption

Abstract

Reckless driving can be the major factor for accidents in Malaysia while many studies reported that speeding is one of the most important factors causing the accidents. In order to reduce the speed of vehicles, traffic calming measures are used with the intention of slowing down the vehicles. Despite the significant contributions of traffic calming devices, present understanding of the devices is limited as there has been very little attention emphasizing the relationship between its effect on rural roads. Therefore, we design this study to to evaluate the effect of the rumble strip in terms of vehicle speed, pollutant emission and fuel consumption using Vissim. The results show that the average speed was reduced by 15.74 km/h or 28%. Besides, the implementation of rumble strip cannot be considered as environmentally friendly as it increased 2% to 3% level of CO, NOx, and VOC emissions and 2.5% of fuel consumption.