The road to improved traffic safety Many factors may be involved in a road traffic accident, including lighting, street layout or sight obstructions. We spoke to Aliaksei Laureshyn about the InDev project’s work in looking deeper into the underlying causes behind road accidents, research which could inform the development of effective counter-measures to improve safety A pedestrian or cyclist involved in a road traffic accident is often much more badly affected than the driver of the vehicle, who is relatively well protected by the surrounding metal framework. Deeper analysis of accidents could lead to new insights into the underlying causes behind them and so help to improve the safety of vulnerable road users (VRUs), a prime motivation behind the work of the InDev project. “The idea was to look deeper into the causative factors behind those accidents,” explains Aliaksei Laureshyn, the manager of the project. This includes not only analysis of accidents and how they develop, but also research into near misses and other, closely related areas. “We are also looking into traffic conflict studies and behavioural studies. Before an actual accident happens, there might have been several near-misses. Maybe the driver avoided a collision by half-a-second, but otherwise the circumstances around how the incident developed are often the same as with an actual accident,” says Laureshyn. This area of research has a long history, dating back around half a century, when observers would be sent out to watch the roads and gather more data about the root
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causes of traffic accidents. Technology has since moved on significantly of course, now Laureshyn and his colleagues in the project are applying modern techniques to help develop more rigorous, detailed methods of analysing the circumstances that lead to traffic accidents. “We are using data from video cameras, and also we are trying to develop computer vision tools that can help in detecting certain road traffic situations,” he outlines. With
Vulnerable road users This work is built on a recognition of the shortcomings of previous traffic conflict analysis methodologies, which were designed primarily with cars in mind, and didn’t always take vulnerable road users fully into account. “For example, if you imagine two cars travelling at 40 kph avoiding each other, you would say this is a serious conflict. But then if instead of a second car there is a cyclist, then intuitively you would say that it’s much more
Before an actual accident happens, there might have been several near-misses. Maybe the driver avoided a collision by half-asecond, but otherwise the circumstances around how the incident developed are the same as with an actual accident modern technology, researchers are able to gather large volumes of information on traffic over extended periods. “We collect accident data, conflict data, and more,” continues Laureshyn. “The project is about methodological research. We aim to build a deeper understanding of how accidents and conflicts should be analysed before we can recommend a methodology for wider use by local municipalities.”
dangerous, as the cyclist is less protected and so more vulnerable. We’re trying to include that aspect of vulnerability, so that estimates of the severity of a conflict are sensitive to who is actually involved,” outlines Laureshyn. Several sources of data are combined in the project, including accident databases, behavioural data and surrogate safety indicators, with researchers looking to develop a toolbox for traffic conflict analysis.
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b) special software detects the presence of the relevant road users and selects those with arriving close in time;
c) an expert investigates the near-misses using another tool and finally judges how close it was to a real collision
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a) Cameras are usually installed on existing infrastructure like lamp posts;
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