Funded by the Federal Highway Administration, the Pavement Friction Management Support Program is working to introduce state-of-the-art methods for measuring roadway friction. These new methods, which are safer to put into practice for road maintenance workers, also provide finer-grained data that can be analyzed to identify low-friction locations on roads.
Once identified, these locations can be targeted for remediation, thereby improving safety for road users, and often saving money for road maintenance agencies. Researchers from VTTI's Center for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure are assisting state departments of transportation with collecting and analyzing data using these techniques and will engage in outreach to promote the adoption of the new methods nationwide.