The purpose of having highway shoulders is to provide space for emergency stops, space for enforcement and maintenance activities and an area for drivers to maneuver in order to avoid crashes. Shoulders are also intended to increase safety by providing a stable & clear recovery area for drivers who have left the travel lane.
When the road shoulders are not wide enough to accommodate trucks or busses, they can not fulfill their purpuse and are causing a hazard to the traffic.
To demonstrate the hazard that narrow shoulders are causing, this paper will present two typical case studies of accidents that occurred because trucks, having been stopped on narrow shoulders, protruded into the traffic lane.
This paper will discuss the importance of the proper width for road shoulders, especially on highways, where the traffic is fast, causing the severity of the accidents to be very high.