Safety

Safety at passive Highway-Railroad Intersections (HRIs) – those without any active warning devices such as flashing lights, gates and bells – has been under particular scrutiny in recent years. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that more crashes occur at passive crossings than active crossings, for the amount of vehicle and train traffic that passive crossings carry. Minnesota has had an aggressive program for HRI safety, but tools to improve safety at the more than 5,000low-volume passive crossings have been too expensive for wide spread implementation. Recommendations issued by NTSB encourage the U.S. Department of Transportation to explore further how ITS technologies could be used improve safety at passive crossings.

Minnesota DOT

C3 Trans Systems LLC

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 19-22, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD) groups 30 member countries in a unique forum to discuss, develop and refine economic and social policies.In the recent past, much attention has been paid to the development of Intelligent Transport Systems that can improve the safety and efficiency of road transport while improving user comfort and convenience. All OECD member countries have been involved in developing or deploying these technologies to some extent. As this process has moved forward, a great deal of information has been developed concerning the benefits that can be realized over time with the full deployment of ITS. Among other things, safety benefits have been measured or estimated for a wide variety of technologies. This report has summarized and documented the current international perspective concerning the ability of ITS to address the road safety situation in the Member countries.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD)

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 19-22, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Congestion due to incidents on highways throughout the United States is a growing problem. An incident is an unplanned event that reduces the capacity of a freeway. A way to address the problem of congestion caused by incidents is through incident management. Incident management refers to the series of actions by traffic and public safety officials to return a highway to its normal operating capacity after an incident has occurred. An effective incident management system seeks to have a well-coordinated incident response plan that reduces the time of delay caused by the incident. The prototype Incident Analysis Toolkit described in this paper is intended to provide techniques to analyze past incidents in order to learn about current and future incidents, and aid in devising a well-organized incident management system. For one specific test case, this toolkit is being applied to the region monitored by the Hampton Roads Smart Traffic Center in the urbanized Southeastern area of Virginia.

University of Virginia: Smart Travel Laboratory - Department of Civil Engineering

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida

FAST(Fast Emergency Vehicle Preemption System) is a system for supporting the travel of emergency vehicles, such as patrol cars, and its main functions are providing information, including  emergency vehicle route guidance and priority control of signals. The implementation of FAST is expected to reduce the number of accidents from emergency travel and to reduce the degree of severity of accidents by facilitating quick arrival at the scene, quick resolution of incidents, and speedy rescue activities.

A verification test was conducted in 1999, and FAST is scheduled for implementation in the Tokyo metropolitan area to support patrol cars in 2001. This paper discusses the verification results and the implementation of the system in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Traffic Management and Control Division,Traffic Bureau - National Police Agency of Japan

Presented at the 10th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, May 1-4, 2000 Boston, MA

The problem faced in EVP deployment decisions is that most of the published research on EVP benefits has focused on measurement of EV travel time reduction.An alternative analytical method may lie in evaluation of conflict points particular to EV passage through signalized intersections. This paper proposes a method for EV-related conflict evaluation that allows transportation professionals to determine the potential safety benefit of EVP. The method uses an EV-specific conflict point analysis based on data collected in an EVP field study conducted in Northern Virginia. EV-related conflict points are characterized in terms of the EV/auto interaction geometry, the signal display, and the severity of potential crashes. Analysis indicates that the number and severity of EV-specific conflict points are significantly reduced with EVP.

Virginia Tech

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, May 19-22, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota