Safety

In recent years, safety countermeasures for intersection collisions are being developed. An ongoing research project is being carried out by researchers in California, in which the emphasis is placed on the developments of left-turn crossing-path of collisions at signalized intersections. This paper reports an update on the research activities especially on field data collection, where a combination of sensing technologies are deployed to detect and measure traffic conflict scenarios that are candidate situations for offering warnings to the drivers. This is a continuing effort from earlier investigations when a methodology was developed to extract scenario-specific parameters of interests. An enhanced set of sensing devices are combined and used to acquire more accurate and informative data for the developments of warning algorithms. The outcome of this study will provide valuable inputs for the implementation of intersection safety countermeasures.

University of California at Berkeley

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

A problem of vehicle with windows tinted excessively has been argued because it was known
that the vehicle with the window can be a cause of accidents. That is because the ahead
vehicle with the windows tinted excessively can obstruct the view of ahead traffic or roadway
condition. However, this problem was not investigated in the field due to the difficulty of the
data collection.
The purpose of this study is to verify the safety issue of the vehicle based on the field study as
well as the issue of the capacity reduction from the vehicle. Through this study, an innovative
experiment method to verify the issues was developed using RTK GPS receivers, and a data
collection was conducted using the developed experiment method. Using the collected data,
the effects of the ahead vehicle with the windows on the traffic condition such as headways
and acceleration noise were analyzed to test that the ahead vehicle with windows tinted too
darkly affects the following vehicle maneuver as following the degree of tinting. This study
was conducted as a frontier study and more studies, for example, full scale analyses
considering various road and vehicle conditions will be conducted in the future.

University of Seoul, Dept. of Transportation Eng

Korean Institute of Construction Technology

The Korea Transport Institute

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

A 75 mile rural segment of I-75 in South Florida, known as Alligator Alley, connects the metropolitan Miami/Ft. Lauderdale urban area to the tourist and beach communities in the Naples/Ft. Myers area of the Florida Gulf Coast. This four lane Interstate Highway segment, with average daily traffic approaching 25,000 vehicles, has experienced a sustained and perplexing crash history that includes 87 fatal crashes between the years of 2001 and 2006. The majority of these crashes involved a single vehicle and occurred in daylight hours under good weather conditions. To further the development of a crash mitigation strategy, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) conducted a study to evaluate the potential impact on crash reduction through the implementation of ITS devices (1). The findings of the study indicated that an ITS Safety System, consisting of speed monitoring, weather sensing and lane control messaging, would yield cost beneficial mitigation of the severe I-75/Alligator Alley crash history. This technical paper presents a summary of the referenced study findings.

VANUS, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

The Intersection Warning System (IWS) project has developed, field deployed, and is
operationally testing a system designed to provide active, real-time supplemental warning to
drivers approaching a stop sign at an intersection where the through traffic does not stop and
alert them to look for oncoming traffic. The intent of the IWS project is to develop a safe and
effective low-cost system that can be readily deployed in rural areas and is easy to operate and
maintain. This paper presents the process followed to develop and test the system.

Minnesota Department of Transportation

Network Transportation Technologies, LLC

SEH, Inc.

Hennepin County Public Works

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

The wintertime traffic accidents in Finland have generated a need to develop context wise weather
information about sudden changes in road weather in order to warn drivers in real-time. There is a
correlation between road conditions and accidents in Finland. E.g. in the year 2003 there was
altogether 254 fatality accidents1 in which 283 fatalities. The road surface was in 24 % of the cases
slippery (60 accidents), in 16% icy (40 accidents), in 4% slushy (9 accidents) in 3 % snowy (7
accidents) and there was water in the grooves in 1 % (3 accidents) (Finnish Road Adminstration
accident report 2003).
The context wise weather information will help the drivers, forwarders and carriers to drive more
safely and to re-route (integrated with dynamic routing services) and schedule transportation in
order to optimise the logistical chain and to improve its safety and the safety of traffic in general.

Destia Ltd

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York