Physical models of traffic safety at crossing streams

Abstract

Traffic safety at intersecting streams is studied quantitatively using methods from Statistical Mechanics on the basis of simple microscopic traffic flow models. In order to determine a relationship between traffic flow and the number of crashes, the modeling focus is on the building block of any road network, namely the crossing of two streams. In this paper, it is shown that the number of crossing conflicts is proportional to the product of the two traffic flows from which a simple model is developed. This model substantiates known empirical findings. Since real crash data are obtained by an involved process from such building blocks, there is a difference between the theoretical and empirical results. This process is modeled here as well and narrows the mismatch between theory and observation.