Investigation of Safety-in-Numbers for Pedestrians and Bicyclists at a Macroscopic Level with Various Exposure Variables

2020 ◽  
Vol 2674 (12) ◽  
pp. 568-580
Author(s):  
Jaeyoung Lee ◽  
Mohamed Abdel-Aty ◽  
Qing Cai
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Road User ◽  
Metropolitan Statistical Area ◽  
Macroscopic Level ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Safety In Numbers ◽  
Household Travel ◽  
National Household Travel Survey

Safety-in-numbers is a phenomenon whereby the crash risks of road users decrease when their numbers increase. Although several previous studies have confirmed safety-in-numbers at a microscopic level (e.g., intersection), few studies have investigated safety-in-numbers at a macroscopic level (or zonal level). In this study, safety-in-numbers is investigated at a larger scale unit, the metropolitan statistical area (MSA), which is usually composed of multiple counties in the U.S.A. Various pedestrian and bicyclist exposure data were obtained from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey (i.e., trips, miles, and hours). A series of Bayesian Poisson lognormal models confirm safety-in-numbers with the different exposure variables at a large-scale geographic level (i.e., MSA). The findings imply that regional travel behavior and cultures of respect for vulnerable road users play a key role in determining the level of pedestrian and bicyclist safety. In addition, the results reveal other factors important to vulnerable road user involved crashes, including but not limited to the climate, demographic, socioeconomic, and travel characteristics of the study regions.

scholarly journals Autonomous Vehicles and Vulnerable Road-Users—Important Considerations and Requirements Based on Crash Data from Two Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Andrew Paul Morris ◽  
Narelle Haworth ◽  
Ashleigh Filtness ◽  
Daryl-Palma Asongu Nguatem ◽  
Laurie Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Road User ◽  
Red Light Running ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
Passenger Vehicles ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users ◽  
Road Intersections

(1) Background: Passenger vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) functionalities are becoming more prevalent within vehicle fleets. However, the full effects of offering such systems, which may allow for drivers to become less than 100% engaged with the task of driving, may have detrimental impacts on other road-users, particularly vulnerable road-users, for a variety of reasons. (2) Crash data were analysed in two countries (Great Britain and Australia) to examine some challenging traffic scenarios that are prevalent in both countries and represent scenarios in which future connected and autonomous vehicles may be challenged in terms of safe manoeuvring. (3) Road intersections are currently very common locations for vulnerable road-user accidents; traffic flows and road-user behaviours at intersections can be unpredictable, with many vehicles behaving inconsistently (e.g., red-light running and failure to stop or give way), and many vulnerable road-users taking unforeseen risks. (4) Conclusions: The challenges of unpredictable vulnerable road-user behaviour at intersections (including road-users violating traffic or safe-crossing signals, or taking other risks) combined with the lack of knowledge of CAV responses to intersection rules, could be problematic. This could be further compounded by changes to nonverbal communication that currently exist between road-users, which could become more challenging once CAVs become more widespread.

Use of a Smartphone GPS Application for Recurrent Travel Behavior Data Collection

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (7) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joann Lynch ◽  
Jeffrey Dumont ◽  
Elizabeth Greene ◽  
Jonathan Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Completion Rate ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Household Travel Survey ◽  
Continuous Survey ◽  
Household Travel

Smartphone-based household travel survey (HTS) studies to date have typically followed the two-part survey process that has historically been used for paper, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and online HTS. In this two-part survey process, households provide demographic data in a recruit survey (part one) and record trips in a travel diary (part two) often at a later date. The Metropolitan Council, the planning organization serving the Twin Cities metropolitan area in Minnesota, has conducted a pilot study for their cyclical HTS, the Travel Behavior Inventory (TBI), that is one of the first large-scale fields of an all-in-one smartphone HTS design. For the 2018 TBI pilot, the traditional two-part survey was merged into a continuous survey experience within a smartphone app. The TBI pilot used a split sample to test this all-in-one design against a traditional two-part smartphone survey design. For the all-in-one design, households were invited to sign in directly to the smartphone application instead of first recruiting online or by phone. The pilot results provide a direct comparison of the two-part and all-in-one designs at the household-, person-, and trip-levels. The results showed a lower overall recruit and completion rate for the all-in-one design but showed clear promise for increasing representation of younger and lower-income populations—traditionally hard-to-reach groups who completed at a higher rate with all-in-one. The authors discuss several factors which may have contributed to the lower overall completion rate and describe planned updates for future waves of the TBI aimed at improving overall response while maintaining the developments that have improved representation from hard-to-reach groups.

scholarly journals Method to Assess and Enhance Vulnerable Road User Safety during Impact Loading

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Ptak
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Head Injuries ◽  
Road User ◽  
Road Accidents ◽  
Safety Requirements ◽  
Interesting Insight ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users

Every year approximately 1.35 million people die as a consequence of road accidents. Almost 50% of road fatalities are vulnerable road users (VRUs). This research reviews the history of traffic safety for VRUs, presents an interesting insight into the statistics and evaluates the current legislation in Europe for pedestrians, cyclists, children on bicycle-mounted seats and motorcyclists in terms of impact situations and applied criteria. This enabled the author to have a better perspective on how the VRUs’ safety is currently verified. Furthermore, the VRU safety requirements are contrasted with the author’s research, which is mainly focused on VRU’s head biomechanics and kinematics. Finally, a new coherent method is presented, which encompasses the sub-groups of VRUs and proposes some improvements to both the regulations as well as technical countermeasures to mitigate the injuries during an impact. This study highlights the importance of numerical methods, which can serve as a powerful tool to study VRUs’ head injuries and kinematics.

scholarly journals The Role of Destination’s Built Environment on Nonmotorized Travel Behavior: A Case of Long Beach, California

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dohyung Kim ◽  
Jiyoung Park ◽  
Andy Hong
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Mode Choice ◽  
Long Beach ◽  
Environment Factors ◽  
Household Travel Survey ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
Household Travel ◽  
National Household Travel Survey

This study examines how built environment factors at trip destinations influence nonmotorized travel behavior in the City of Long Beach, California. Using 2008–2009 National Household Travel Survey with California Add-Ons, we found that nonmotorized users tend to choose more clustered destinations than motorized users, and that density, diversity, and design at destinations significantly affect mode choice decisions. Transportation networks and nonmotorized facilities at trip destinations are especially important factors for nonmotorized mode choice. Future policy and research need to consider built environment factors at trip destinations to effectively accommodate nonmotorized travel within a city.

scholarly journals Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Communication for Vulnerable Road Users: Survey, Design Considerations, and Challenges

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parag Sewalkar ◽  
Jochen Seitz
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Road User ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Design Considerations ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users

In the last few years, increasing attention has been provided to research Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) communication systems. These V2P systems serve different purposes (safety or convenience) and cater to different Vulnerable Road User (VRU) groups. Also, these V2P systems employ different communication technologies, and use different mechanisms to interact with the users. An effective V2P system also needs to consider varying characteristics of different VRUs. These various elements may be considered as design parameters of the V2P system. In this paper, we discuss such elements and propose a design framework for the V2P system based on them. We also provide an extensive survey of existing V2P efforts for safety and convenience applications and their design considerations. We perform a case study that compares the different approaches of V2P safety system for different VRU groups under different pre-crash scenarios. Finally, we discuss a few technological challenges in integration of VRUs into V2X systems.

scholarly journals Cooperative Multi-Sensor Tracking of Vulnerable Road Users in the Presence of Missing Detections

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (17) ◽  
pp. 4817
Author(s):  
Martin Dimitrievski ◽  
David Van Hamme ◽  
Peter Veelaert ◽  
Wilfried Philips
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Integration ◽  
Tracking Performance ◽  
Road User ◽  
Fusion Algorithm ◽  
Multiple Control ◽  
Sensor Model ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Noise Characteristics ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users

This paper presents a vulnerable road user (VRU) tracking algorithm capable of handling noisy and missing detections from heterogeneous sensors. We propose a cooperative fusion algorithm for matching and reinforcing of radar and camera detections using their proximity and positional uncertainty. The belief in the existence and position of objects is then maximized by temporal integration of fused detections by a multi-object tracker. By switching between observation models, the tracker adapts to the detection noise characteristics making it robust to individual sensor failures. The main novelty of this paper is an improved imputation sampling function for updating the state when detections are missing. The proposed function uses a likelihood without association that is conditioned on the sensor information instead of the sensor model. The benefits of the proposed solution are two-fold: firstly, particle updates become computationally tractable and secondly, the problem of imputing samples from a state which is predicted without an associated detection is bypassed. Experimental evaluation shows a significant improvement in both detection and tracking performance over multiple control algorithms. In low light situations, the cooperative fusion outperforms intermediate fusion by as much as 30%, while increases in tracking performance are most significant in complex traffic scenes.

scholarly journals Integrating Communication with Conspicuity to Enhance Vulnerable Road User Safety: ArroWhere Case Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2761
Author(s):  
Takuro Shoji ◽  
Gordon Lovegrove
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Control ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Road User ◽  
Communication Aids ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users ◽  
Control Devices

This paper presents findings from a research study into the role that communication plays in the safety of vulnerable road users (VRUs), including a literature review, a hypothesis, and a case study testing our hypothesis. Many governments and road authorities lack capital or have not made it a priority to implement full VRU safety measures, with many gaps in VRU infrastructure and networks. These gaps leave VRUs to take safety into their own hands, including use of conspicuity aids such as high-visibility wear, helmets, bells, and lights with differing levels of effectiveness. The knowledge gap regarding the conventional wisdom, “be safe, be seen,” is the absence of communication and comprehension between road users (VRUs and vehicles). We hypothesize that communication aids are equally, if not more important than visibility aids for VRU safety. A case study was conducted to measure the effectiveness of several Hi-Viz safety vest designs including online surveys and separate in-field experiments using Instrumented Probe Bicycles. The results suggest that Hi-Viz safety vests using arrow designs (ArroWhere’s proprietary products and designs) similar to those found in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) can increase VRU safety until road authorities can fully fund and complete proper and sustainable VRU networks.

scholarly journals An Interactive Tool to Compare and Communicate Traffic Safety Risks: TrafficSTATS

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Fischbeck ◽  
Barbara Gengler ◽  
David Gerard ◽  
Randy S. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Household Travel Survey ◽  
Safety Risks ◽  
Database Technology ◽  
Query Tool ◽  
Government Data ◽  
Household Travel ◽  
National Household Travel Survey

TrafficSTATS (www.traffic-stats.us) is a publicly-available, interactive, web-based query tool that provides estimates of passenger vehicle and other traffic safety risks. Using "cube" database technology, TrafficSTATS houses publicly-available government data on traffic fatalities from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and personal travel behavior from the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) and calculates risk statistics in real time for user-specified queries. We describe the motivation for developing the tool, explain the technology developed to store the data and facilitate the queries, and provide a series of examples of the types of comparisons that can be made quickly and efficiently.

scholarly journals Video observation of encounters between the automated shuttles and other traffic participants along an approach to right-hand priority T-intersection

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Pokorny ◽  
Belma Skender ◽  
Torkel Bjørnskau ◽  
Marjan P. Hagenzieker
Keyword(s):  
Road User ◽  
Video Observation ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Traffic Conditions ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Bicycle Lane

Abstract Introduction Increasing numbers of deployment projects of automated shuttles have been taking place worldwide. Safety is one of the main concerns for their successful implementation. Therefore, it is vital to gain the knowledge about interactions between these shuttles and other traffic participants. Method Given the lack of behavioural observational studies under regular traffic conditions, the presented study applies external video recordings to explore encounters between the shuttles approaching a T-intersection and other traffic participants. The encounters of interest included a vulnerable road user in the bicycle lane, a pedestrian on the zebra crossing and a road user overtaking the shuttle. The shuttles were identified from the video by RUBA software. We analysed the encounters using T-Analyst software together with the manual observation of traffic participants' behaviour. Results From 220 h of video, 318 unique manoeuvres of the shuttle were observed and 83 encounters with other traffic participants were identified and explored. Several types of risks and behavioural patterns were identified, such as road users misusing the defensive style of the shuttles or cyclists in the bicycle lane not being sure about the shuttle’s intention. Frequent hard stops of the shuttles might be dangerous for the passengers inside and can increase the risk of rear end accidents. Conclusions The findings provide a valuable insight into the interactions between automated shuttles and other traffic participants under regular traffic conditions on one location in Oslo, Norway. The study showed that introducing automated shuttles into regular traffic can lead to the emergence of new types of interactions between the shuttles and other traffic participants.

Applying the Twilight Envelope to the Forensic Analysis of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Conspicuity in the Dark

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 479-483
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Whetsel Borzendowski ◽  
Alan O. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Road User ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Traffic Crashes ◽  
Traffic Crash ◽  
Selective Degradation ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Vulnerable Road User ◽  
Artificial Illumination ◽  
Vulnerable Road Users

The large majority of traffic crashes involving vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and bicyclists occur when ambient illumination levels are reduced. The difficulty drivers face in recognizing the presence of these road users in the darkness can be attributed to the selective degradation of foveal visual functions, which support a driver’s ability to detect and identify the presence of potential hazards and other objects in the environment. Clothing worn by pedestrians and bicyclists can contribute to their conspicuity to oncoming drivers; extensive research has demonstrated that dark-clothing-clad pedestrians are often recognized at dangerously short distances. Vehicle headlamps serve to illuminate the path ahead for drivers, particularly in the absence of artificial illumination along the roadway, in order to improve driver visibility in the dark. The twilight envelope is a means of determining the visibility distance afforded by headlamps. This approach to describing illumination was applied to the analysis of a traffic crash involving a vulnerable road user, providing insight into the driver’s visibility. Future research should address the relationship between the twilight envelope of vehicle headlamps and the distance at which drivers are able to recognize potential hazards such as pedestrians and bicyclists using those headlamps.

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