Traffic Safety Management Research Articles

Classification of traffic accidents’ factors using TrafficRiskClassifier

The TrafficRiskClassifier model introduced in this study adopts an innovative approach that incorporates migration learning, image classification, and self-supervised learning, aiming to significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of traffic accident risk analysis. Compared with traditional traffic safety analysis techniques, this model focuses on utilizing contextual information and situational data of traffic accidents to achieve a higher level of risk classification accuracy. The core of this approach is to deeply mine and analyze the detailed information in the accident environment, to provide more scientific and effective support for traffic accident risk prevention and response. Initially, by integrating migration learning with image classification techniques, the model proficiently extracts pivotal features from intricate traffic scenarios and formulates initial assessments of accident risks. Subsequently, self-supervised learning is incorporated in this study, augmenting the model's capability to comprehend and categorize accident imagery. The TrafficRiskClassifier model exhibits a generalization ability of 91.82%, 85.16%, and 80.92% on individual classification tasks, respectively, signifying its robust learning capacity and proficiency in managing unseen data. Furthermore, the TrafficRiskClassifier model delineates a functional nexus between accident risk and variables such as weather, road conditions, and personal factors, employing a polynomial regression approach. This methodology not only amplifies the predictive precision of the model but also renders it versatile across diverse scenarios. Through the analysis of various polynomial functions, the model achieves enhanced accuracy in classifying disparate risk levels. The outcomes demonstrate that the TrafficRiskClassifier model can efficaciously amalgamate contextual information within traffic scenarios, thereby achieving more precise classification of traffic accident risks, and consequently serving as an invaluable instrument for urban traffic safety management.

The effect of guardrail color on driver behavior based on driving style along mountain curves

Objective Mountain highways are linearly complex, with extensive curves and high accident injury rates, how to improve driving safety is the key to traffic safety management on mountain highways, and it also meets the need for harmonious and sustainable development of the society. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of different guardrail color configurations on the driving behavior of different styles of drivers when driving on mountainous curves from the perspective of improving road aids – guardrails. Methods A virtual reality experiment was designed using a driving simulator and VR technology, and 64 subjects were recruited to participate and complete the experiment. Results Drivers with non-adaptive driving styles (Reckless, Angry, Anxious) traveled at significantly higher speeds than subjects with adaptive driving styles (Cautious) on mountainous roads; drivers with Cautious styles had better lane-keeping ability when passing through different radii of curves as compared to non-adaptive drivers; and the red and yellow guardrails were more effective in decreasing the speeds at which drivers passed and in increasing the stability of lane-keeping. Conclusions The results of the study show that the effectiveness of red and yellow guardrails is better, which provides a reference for the traffic management department to propose a standardized color setting of guardrails in mountainous areas, which is conducive to the development of more precise traffic management measures to reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents.

A macroscopic safety indicator for road segment: application of entropy theory

Road traffic safety is confronted with unique challenges worldwide due to the varied road network, high population density, and the rapid increase in vehicle numbers. This necessitates an effective evaluation of traffic safety at the road segment level to improve traffic safety management. Existing safety indicators, such as crash frequency (which lacks real-time availability) and Surrogate Safety Measures (focused on micro-level interactions), fall short in quantifying the overall safety status of road segments. To overcome these limitations, we introduce the concept of entropy, typically used to measure disorder in complex systems, into road traffic safety assessment. Our research presents a novel macroscopic safety indicator named ‘velocity entropy,’ along with its calculation method, which involves discretization and the Parzen window technique. The efficacy of velocity entropy is validated using the UTE dataset, a high-fidelity trajectory dataset from China, showing a more significant correlation with traffic conflicts than other macroscopic traffic properties. Notably, velocity entropy can track the temporal and spatial evolution of traffic safety, providing insights into the dynamic development of traffic risks. Overall, velocity entropy offers an innovative, practical, and theoretically meaningful tool for assessing and predicting road safety.

Investigating built environment and traffic flow impact on crash frequency in urban road networks

While numerous studies have examined the factors that influence crash occurrence, there remains a gap in understanding the intricate relationship between built environment, traffic flow, and crash occurrences across different spatial units. This study explores how built environment attributes, and dynamic traffic flow characteristics affect crash frequency by focusing on proposed traffic density-based zones (TDZs). Utilizing a comprehensive dataset from Greater Melbourne, Australia, this research emphasizes on the dynamic traffic flow variables and insights from the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram model, considering parameters such as shockwave velocity and congestion index. The association between the potential influencing factors and crash frequency is examined using a random parameter negative binomial regression model. Results indicate that the data segmentation based on TDZs is instrumental in establishing a more refined crash model compared to traditional planning-based zones, as demonstrated by improved goodness-of-fit measures. Factors including density (e.g., employment density), network design (e.g., road density and highway density), land use diversity (e.g., job-housing balance and land use mixture), and public transit accessibility (e.g., bus route density) are significantly associated with crash occurrence. Furthermore, the unobserved heterogeneity effects of the shockwave velocity and congestion index on crashes are revealed. The study highlights the significance of incorporating dynamic traffic flow variables in understanding crash frequency variations across different spatial units. These findings can inform optimal real-time traffic monitoring, environmental design, and road safety management strategies to mitigate crash risks.

Novel collision risk measurement method for multi-ship encounters via velocity obstacles and temporal proximity

The collision risk assessment of multi-ship encounters in busy waters is of great significance for collision risk early warning and the intelligent supervision of maritime traffic. In this paper, a quantitative and visual evaluation method is proposed to describe changes in multi-ship collision risk in the velocity space according to multi-ship collision risk characteristics. Non-linear velocity obstacles and closest point of approach were combined to measure the risk of ship collision from the perspective of both the difficulty and urgency of the encounter. The proposed method was verified via case studies using historical Automatic Identification System data for the East China Sea. The method advantages were confirmed via comparison to the conventional time-varying collision risk and collision risk index methods. The results show that the proposed method can quantify changes in multi-ship collision risk more intuitively and effectively. The proposed method could be further developed as a new risk indicator for maritime traffic safety management and could aid in the navigation safety of manned and unmanned ships.

A multiscale enhanced pavement crack segmentation network coupling spectral and spatial information of UAV hyperspectral imagery

Road pavement cracks are a critical factor affecting the health conditions of road pavements. Accurate crack detection contributes to providing data support for road maintenance measures. Compared to conventional crack detection algorithms, deep learning based crack segmentation methods have practical significance for road maintenance and traffic safety management due to their high precision and automation. However, existing deep learning methods often suffer from segmentation accuracy loss due to the varying crack sizes and the presence of stains on the pavement with spatial characteristics similar to cracks, leading to the misclassification of cracks. Therefore, this study proposed a multiscale enhanced road pavement crack segmentation network (MS-CrackSeg) by coupling spectral and spatial information to detect pavement cracks from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral imagery. MS-CrackSeg can simultaneously learn the spatial and rich spectral features of cracks in the hyperspectral imagery, improving the discrimination of those targets with similar spatial features to cracks compared to previous approaches. Moreover, the Multiscale Self-Attention-like Feature Extraction Module (MSSA) is introduced to extract and fuse multiscale crack features to enhance the crack detection. Experiments on a dataset consisting of 1031 hyperspectral images demonstrated the superior crack segmentation of the proposed method compared to the comparative methods. In particular, the proposed method achieved the highest F1-score of 0.74 and mean Intersection over Union of 0.79, indicating an exceptional performance. The developed approach offers improved data support for road maintenance measures and has validated the advantages of UAV hyperspectral imagery in road crack segmentation. The annotated hyperspectral dataset and the code for MS-CrackSeg network are available at https://github.com/williamchen-x/MS-CrackSeg.

Exploring the associations of demographics and scale measures with cognitive driving behavior among older drivers in China

Age-related changes and frailty are reasons for the high proportion of older drivers in certain types of crashes, such as giving right of way at intersections and turning left. The identified crash causes include the driver’s demographics, driving style, cognitive function, and mental workload. This study aimed to explore the associations of demographics and scale measures with cognitive driving behavior. Thirty-nine drivers, consisting of twenty younger drivers (18–60 years old) and nineteen older drivers (above 60 years old), participated in driving simulation experiments after completing scale tests. The selected scale measures included the demographic questionnaire, Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI-C), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Trail Making Test Part A (TMT-A) and Part B (TMT-B), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) for obtaining subjective information from drivers. Driving scenarios were developed based on the driving characteristics of older adults to investigate age-related driving ability. The driving behavior parameters included reaction time, lateral stability, and driving speed, corresponding to reaction, perception, and execution. Three stepwise regression models showed that NASA-TLX, the interaction between age and driving experience, and the interaction between age and TMT-A significantly explained 53.3 % of reaction time variance; TMT-A, risk driving style, anxiety driving style, and gender significantly explained 53.5 % of lateral stability variance; TMT-A, NASA-TLX, and MMSE significantly explained 60.6 % of driving speed variance. Subsequently, the impact of four age-related predictor variables on driving behavior was further discussed. It is worth noting that a rich driving experience may compensate for driving performance. However cognitive impairment impairs this compensation. Driving behavior is influenced by a combination of various factors. Age, as a physiological indicator, is not sufficient to be a strong predictive factor for lateral stability and driving speed. The results provide a reference for traffic safety management departments to streamline driving suitability test procedures and propose targeted training methods for older drivers.

A big data analytics method for the evaluation of maritime traffic safety using automatic identification system data

The complex traffic situations are among the factors influencing maritime safety. They can be quantitatively estimated through the analysis of traffic data. This paper explores the impact of complex traffic situations on maritime safety, focusing on inland waterway traffic. It presents a big data analytics method, utilizing data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and historical maritime accident records. The methodology involves AIS data preprocessing and spatial autocorrelation models, including Moran's index, to extract and evaluate the dynamic characteristics of maritime traffic. The analysis of traffic characteristic includes a thorough investigation into the spatial-temporal distribution of ship average speed and trajectory density. The paper then introduces an effective traffic characteristic analysis model that evaluates the relationship between maritime traffic patterns and accidents. The study, specifically targeting the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River, reveals variations in ship trajectory density and average speed over time. It identifies several hotspots with a significant local correlation between these factors. Moreover, a substantial correlation is found between the locations of maritime accidents and areas with increased ship trajectory density and average speed. These results may provide insights for traffic safety management and highlight strategies for preventing maritime accidents.

Driving Risk Identification of Truck Drivers Based on China’s Highway Toll Data

Dangerous or illegal driving may disrupt the traffic safety management of public security organs, damage road infrastructure, lead to traffic accidents, or result in economic losses. This paper proposes a framework based on China’s highway toll data to identify dangerous or illegal driving risks, such as unfamiliarity with road conditions, overload, driving over the speed limit, fatigued driving, fake license plates, and other risks. The unfamiliarity with road conditions is identified with the frequency of driving routes. When the total weight of a vehicle and its cargo is greater than the upper limit of the total weight of the vehicle and its cargo, the vehicle can be judged as overloaded. When the actual travel time is less than the minimum travel time, it can be inferred that the vehicle has a risk of fatigued driving, driving over the speed limit, a fake license plate, or other risks. Two accidents are used to demonstrate the process of the proposed framework for identifying driving risks based on China’s highway toll data. Additional analysis proves that the proposed framework can be used to identify dangerous or illegal driving risks, and it provides a scientific basis for the traffic safety management of public security organs, reducing infrastructure damage, and avoiding the loss of national taxes and fees.

Intelligent Vehicle Violation Detection System Under Human–Computer Interaction and Computer Vision

In view of the current problems of low detection accuracy, poor stability and slow detection speed of intelligent vehicle violation detection systems, this article will use human–computer interaction and computer vision technology to solve the existing problems. First, the picture data required for the experiment is collected through the Bit Vehicle model dataset, and computer vision technology is used for preprocessing. Then, use Kalman filtering to track and study the vehicle to help better predict the trajectory of the vehicle in the area that needs to be detected; finally, use human–computer interaction technology to build the interactive interface of the system and improve the operability of the system. The violation detection system based on computer vision technology has an accuracy of more than 96.86% for the detection of the eight types of violations extracted, and the average detection is 98%. Through computer vision technology, the system can accurately detect and identify vehicle violations in real time, effectively improving the efficiency and safety of traffic management. In addition, the system also pays special attention to the design of human–computer interaction, provides an intuitive and easy-to-use user interface, and enables traffic managers to easily monitor and manage traffic conditions. This innovative intelligent vehicle violation detection system is expected to help the development of traffic management technology in the future.

A deep learning approach for robust traffic accident information extraction from online chinese news

AbstractRoad traffic accidents are the leading causes of injuries and fatalities. Understanding the traffic accident occurrence pattern and its contributing factors are prerequisites for effective traffic safety management. The paper proposes a deep learning approach for traffic accident recognition and information extraction from online Chinese news to extract and organize traffic accidents automatically. The approach consists of three modules, including automated news collection, news classification, and traffic accident information extraction. The automated news collection module crawls news from online sources, cleans and organizes it into a general news database with different categories of news. The news classification module robustly recognizes the traffic accident news from all types of news by fusing the sentence‐wise and context‐wise semantic news information. The accident information extraction module extracts the key attributes of traffic accidents (e.g. causes, times, locations) from news text using the SoftLexicon‐BiLSTM‐CRF method. The proposed approach is validated by comparing it with state‐of‐the‐art text mining methods using Chinese news data crawled online. The results show that the approach can achieve a high information extraction performance in terms of precision, recall, and F1‐score. It improves the performance of the best benchmark model (BiLSTM‐CRF) by 18.8% in precision and 12.08% in F1‐score. In addition, the potential value of the automatically extracted accident data is illustrated from online news in complementing traditional authority accident data to drive more effective traffic safety management in practice.

Evaluating the Efficacy of Real-Time Connected Vehicle Basic Safety Messages in Mitigating Aberrant Driving Behaviour and Risk of Vehicle Crashes: Preliminary Insights from Highway Scenarios

Connected vehicle (CV) technology has revolutionised the intelligent transportation management system by providing new perspectives and opportunities. To further improve risk perception and early warning capabilities in intricate traffic scenarios, a comprehensive field test was conducted within a CV framework. Initially, data for basic safety messages (BSM) were systematically gathered within a real-world vehicle test platform. Subsequently, an innovative approach was introduced that combined multimodal interactive filtering with an advanced vehicle dynamics model to integrate BSM vehicle motion data with observations from roadside units. In addition, a driving condition perception methodology was developed, leveraging rough sets and an enhanced support vector machine (SVM), to identify aberrant driver behaviours and potential driving risks effectively. Furthermore, this study integrated BSM data from various scenarios, including car-following, lane changes, and free driving within the CV environment, to formulate multidimensional driving state sequence patterns for short-term predictions (0.5 s) utilising the long short-term memory (LSTM) model framework. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach in accurately identifying potentially hazardous driving conditions and promptly predicting collision risks. The findings from this research hold substantial promise in advancing road traffic safety management.

Traffic Safety Assessment and Injury Severity Analysis for Undivided Two-Way Highway–Rail Grade Crossings

The safety and reliability of undivided two-way highway–rail grade crossings (HRGCs) are of paramount importance in transportation systems. Utilizing crash data from the Federal Railroad Administration between 2020 and 2021, this study aims to predict crash injury severity outcomes and investigate various factors influencing injury severities. The χ2 test was first used to select variables that were significantly associated with injury outcomes. By employing the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and interpretable SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), a cross-category safety assessment that offers an evidence-based hierarchy and statistical inference of risk factors associated with crashes, crossings, vehicles, drivers, and environment was provided for killed, injured, and uninjured outcomes. Some significant predictors overlapped between the killed and injured models, such as old driver, driver was in vehicle, main track, went around the gate, adverse crossing surface, and truck, while the other different significant factors revealed that the model could distinguish between different severity levels. Additionally, the results suggested that the model has varying performances in predicting different injury severities, with the killed model having the highest accuracy of 93.36%. The SHAP dependency plots for the top three features also ensure reliable predictions and inform potential interventions aimed at strengthening traffic safety and risk management practices, such as enhanced warning systems and targeted educational campaigns for older drivers.

Exploring the Impact of Rainfall on Vehicle Trajectory Patterns and Sideslip Risk: An Empirical Investigation

Understanding the sideslip risks of various trajectory patterns, as well as the impact of rainfall on them, is critical for improving road safety. However, the lack of precise classification indicators hampers systematic analysis of the variations in vehicle trajectory patterns. To address this, this study proposes a parameterized classification method for trajectories on curved segments, employing the radius and offset of the trajectory as the primary classification features and dividing the trajectories into nine patterns. These patterns represent variations from smaller to larger radii and inside to outside lane offsets, reflecting different driving behaviors and vehicle stability during vehicle cornering. Concurrently, the friction coefficient utilization rate is used to effectively compare vehicles’ sideslip risk under different weather conditions. Based on this, we construct a framework using computer vision technology for automatically identifying trajectory patterns and measuring sideslip risk. We conducted an empirical study on a highway-curved segment with high sideslip risk in China and collected two datasets under clear and rainy conditions for analysis. The classification results show that the proposed method can effectively classify trajectories according to nine trajectory patterns. Comparative analysis reveals that vehicle trajectories in both the inside and outside lanes are notably more affected by rainfall compared to the middle lane. Meanwhile, trucks demonstrate a higher susceptibility to rainfall than cars. In addition, the analysis of the sideslip risk for different trajectory patterns discovers several high-risk patterns. This study provides an effective approach for monitoring and analyzing the sideslip risk on curved segments, thereby contributing to the enhancement of road design and traffic safety management.

An Econometric Analysis to Explore the Temporal Variability of the Factors Affecting Crash Severity Due to COVID-19

This study utilizes multilevel ordinal logistic regression (M-OLR), an approach that accounts for spatial heterogeneity, to assess the dynamics of crash severity in Virginia, USA, over the years 2018 to 2023. This period was notably influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated stay-at-home orders, which significantly altered traffic behaviors and crash severity patterns. This study aims to evaluate the pandemic’s impact on crash severity and examine the consequent changes in driver behaviors. Despite a reduction in total crashes, a worrying increase in the proportion of severe injuries is observed, suggesting that less congested roads during the pandemic led to riskier driving behaviors, notably increased speed violations. This research also highlights heightened risks for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, with changes in transportation habits during the pandemic leading to more severe crashes involving these groups. Additionally, this study emphasizes the consistent influence of environmental and roadway features, like weather conditions and traffic signals, in determining crash outcomes. These findings offer vital insights for road safety policymakers and urban planners, indicating the necessity of adaptive road safety strategies in response to changing societal norms and behaviors. The research underscores the critical role of individual behaviors and mental states in traffic safety management and advocates for holistic approaches to ensure road safety in a rapidly evolving post-pandemic landscape.

IMA‐LSTM: An Interaction‐Based Model Combining Multihead Attention with LSTM for Trajectory Prediction in Multivehicle Interaction Scenario

The rapid development of vehicle‐to‐vehicle (V2V) communication technology provides more opportunities to improve traffic safety and efficiency, which facilitates the exchange of multivehicle information to mine potential patterns and hidden associations in vehicle trajectory prediction. To address the importance of fine‐grained vehicle interaction modelling in vehicle trajectory prediction, the present work proposes an integrated vehicle trajectory prediction model that combines the multihead attention mechanism with long short‐term memory (IMA‐LSTM) in multivehicle interaction scenarios. Compared to existing studies, a dedicated feature extraction module including both individual features and interactive features is designed and sophisticated multihead attention mechanism is applied with LSTM framework to capture the variation of spatial‐temporal interactions between vehicles. The performance of the proposed model in different scenarios is examined using both the high‐D and the NGSIM dataset through comprehensive comparison experiments. The results indicate that the proposed IMA‐LSTM model presents great improvement in vehicle trajectory prediction performance in different scenarios compared to the model that does not consider multivehicle interaction features. Moreover, it outperforms other existing models in 3–5s prediction horizons and such superiority is more evident in left lane‐changing (LLC) scenarios than lane‐keeping (LK) and right lane‐changing (RLC) scenarios. The outcomes fully address the importance of fine‐grained interactive feature modelling in improving vehicle trajectory performance in complex multivehicle interaction scenarios and could further contribute to more refined traffic safety and traffic efficiency management.

Assessing crash severity of urban roads with data mining techniques using big data from in-vehicle dashcam

<abstract> <p>The factors that affect the severity of crashes must be identified for pedestrian and traffic safety in urban roads. Specifically, in the case of urban road crashes, these crashes occur due to the complex interaction of various factors. Therefore, it is necessary to collect high-quality data that can derive these various factors. Accordingly, this study collected crash data, which included detailed crash factor data on the huge urban and mid-level roads. Using this, various crash factors including driver, vehicle, road, environment, and crash characteristics are constructed to develop a crash severity prediction model. Through this, this study identified more detailed factors affecting the severity of urban road crashes. The crash severity model was developed using both machine learning and statistical models because the insights that can be obtained from the latest technology and traditional methods are different. Therefore, the binary logit model, a support vector machine, and extreme gradient boosting were developed using key variables derived from the multiple correspondence analysis and Boruta-SHapley Additive exPlanations. The main result of this study shows that the crash severity decreased at four-street intersections and when traffic segregation facilities were installed. The findings of this study can be used to establish a traffic safety management strategy to reduce the severity of crashes on urban roads.</p> </abstract>

The system of formation of a fleet of vehicles for traffic safety management on high-speed roads

The article discusses the issue of increasing the requirements for road safety in the Russian Federation. The data on the growth of the fleet and the increase in transport mobility of the population are presented, while it is noted that the death rate as a result of road accidents remains very high. Special attention is paid to the analysis of winter road maintenance, the causes of mass accidents, as well as the assessment of the quality of road maintenance and possible ways to improve the safety system. It is noted that at the moment there is wear and tear of existing road equipment, which is being replaced with new imported ones. The necessity of improvement has been established and an algorithm for the formation and management of a fleet of road and utility vehicles servicing highways has been proposed to minimize accident-hazardous road operating conditions and ensure road safety at all levels. Keywords road safety, winter maintenance of roads, motorways, road vehicles, a fleet of vehicles for the maintenance of highways

A hybrid deep learning method for distracted driving risk prediction based on spatio-temporal driving behavior data

ABSTRACT Timely exact distracted driving risk prediction is beneficial to perceive real-time traffic risk, which is an essential but challenging task in modern traffic safety management. The use and improvement of measures for road safety management will be better facilitated by grasping and analyzing the spatio-temporal patterns of driving behavior and forming predictions. In this paper, a Distracted Driving Risk Prediction (DDRP) neural network by deep learning and spatio-temporal dependence is proposed, which to accurately predict the scale of distracted driving behavior on road networks. Then, the method is employed for distracted driving risk prediction based on the provincial road network. The experiment demonstrates that our method performs relatively better than the other methods applied in this paper. In addition, the method can adapt to predict the scale of distracted driving behavior in different categories, time intervals, and grid cells.

Analyzing Freeway Safety Influencing Factors Using the CatBoost Model and Interpretable Machine-Learning Framework, SHAP

Exploring and analyzing safety influencing factors can guide targeted traffic safety management. Traditional traffic safety models are aimed at specific data problems and making adjustments to the model structure, which lack focus on predictive ability and have limited information on the analysis of influencing factors. In recent years, machine-learning methods have opened new avenues in modeling that have higher prediction accuracy, can identify complex nonlinear relationships, and can overcome over- and under-dispersion and correlation. Machine-learning methods, however, pose the problem of limited interpretability. The interpretable machine-learning framework SHAP can be an effective solution, which can not only reflect the influence of features in each sample but also generate global interpretation. This study established gradient boosting models including the CatBoost and XGBoost models as traffic safety models, which were compared with a traditional NB regression model and a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. SHAP was used to analyze several safety influencing factors, including geometric design features, traffic operation characteristics, time of day, and land use. Results confirmed that the CatBoost model has better prediction ability and is a more suitable traffic safety model than the traditional negative binomial regression model. Among the key findings were that ramp type is the most important factor in freeway crash frequency; curve presence has a great positive impact, while truck proportion has a great negative impact; and traffic volume is highly correlated with truck proportion. These findings can provide theoretical support for safety operation management and targeted improvement measures for freeways.