Modelling traffic safety at uncontrolled median openings: A case study in India

Abstract

Assessment of traffic safety is an essential study in transportation engineering. In a developing country like India, around 150,000 people die in road crashes every year. Furthermore, at uncontrolled median openings, the severity of road crashes is higher due to the presence of impatient U-turning road users who don't obey the rule of priority. Traditionally, road crash data have been used since long to analyze traffic safety. However, in developing countries, the main drawback of this conventional method is limited availability of accident data as very few accidents get reported. Moreover, the accuracy of these reported data is questionable. Therefore, now-a-days, various surrogate traffic safety measures like Post Encroachment Time (PET), and Time to Collision (TTC) are being used to examine the safety of road users. Among them, PET is regarded as the most consistent, and most widely used safety indicator. Therefore, in the present study, PET across different traffic volume levels has been determined. Videography data has been collected from selected median openings located on six-lane divided urban roads. PET values for different traffic volumes, and different category of vehicles have been analysed in detail. Further, the distribution of PET values across the full width of road has also been studied. Concept of critical speed is introduced which is compared with conflicting speed to assess unsafe conflicts and determine a critical PET. Finally, regression models have also been proposed with good levels of accuracy to determine the PET values for various category of vehicles travelling at different conflicting speeds.