Safety

Controlling traffic tunnels is a complex task which imposes serious requirements. Tunnel
safety depends largely on alerting motorists and tunnel personnel of a traffic incident in a
timely manner. Such an alert must be based on a reliable and complete monitoring of tunnel
activities. Highway tunnels are already equipped with basic video systems mainly for
supervising by tunnel stuff and guidance of emergency activities. Effective incident
management completely depends on fast incident detection and fast incident verification. Due
to the huge amount of information provided by video systems, image analysis might help
human operators to detect unexpected events and prevent dangerous situations.
This paper summarises our present study called VITUS-1. The feasibility study VITUS-1
defines a concept mainly based on digital video image analysis in order to accomplish the
following tasks: 1) automatically recognizing alarm situations in road tunnels; 2) alerting the
tunnel personnel and – if necessary – the road users; and 3) automatic storage of traffic
incident video sequences.

1ARC Seibersdorf research GmbH,
Autobahnen und Schnellstrassen-Finanzierungs-Aktien Gesellschaft (ASFiNAG)

ETM professional control GmbH

Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision - Graz University of Technology

PTV AG

ASTL

Presented at the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 6-10, 2005, San Francisco, California

A frontal collision warning system (FCWS) for transit buses is introduced. The main purpose
of the transit FCWS is to help bus drivers avoid crashes. Given the fact that buses mostly run
in complex urban and suburban environments, it is a challenge for the system to keep high
sensitivity to frontal collision scenarios and give drivers timely true warnings while
suppressing the excessive nuisance and false warnings. The system architecture and the latest
developments of the warning algorithm are introduced. The verification test of the system is
discussed. The threat assessment in the warning algorithm is described. Categorization and
analyzes of scenarios and the statistic result are presented.

PATH program, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Berkeley, USA

Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Presented at the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 6-10, 2005, San Francisco, California

A presentation on Road Weather from Dr. David Stensrud, presented to TSAG on May 23, 2012.

Active traffic management consists of a series of integrated congestion management strategies including speed harmonization, queue warning, hard shoulder running, dynamic rerouting, travel time signs, ramp meter control, managed lanes, etc. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review and comparative analysis on various active traffic management strategies and their application. The detailed analyses of the key technologies are provided, and the system benefit, safety, and equity concerns are addressed in this paper. The findings of this study indicate active traffic management systems demonstrate the great potential for freeway congestion mitigation and safety enhancement.

Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas

Department of Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida