It’s been unfortunately some time without posting. The Summer season is very busy for us as we are trying to do more research, the TRB annual meeting submission deadline nears and there are many Summer students to supervise. But I guess busy is good.
Anyway, we just got our first paper accepted in Accident Analysis & Prevention, which was a long, long, time coming up. It is an analysis of the results of my PhD (yes, 2005…) that was not easy to put together as it addresses exposure to the risk of collision, but does not provide direct measure of safety, and is a long distance collaboration with my former supervisor Sophie Midenet at IFSTTAR (previously INRETS). I’ll let you with the abstract:
This paper proposes an original definition of the exposure to lateral collision in signalized intersections and discusses the results of a real world experiment. This exposure is defined as the duration of situations where the stream that is given the right-of-way goes through the conflict zone while road users are waiting in the cross-traffic approach. This measure, obtained from video sensors, makes it possible to compare different operating conditions such as different traffic signal strategies. The data from a real world experiment is used, where the adaptive real-time strategy CRONOS (ContRol Of Networks by Optimization of Switchovers) and a time-plan strategy with vehicle-actuated ranges alternately controlled an isolated intersection near Paris. Hourly samples with similar traffic volumes are compared and the exposure to lateral collision is different in various areas of the intersection and various traffic conditions for the two strategies. The total exposure under peak hour traffic conditions drops by roughly 5 min/h with the CRONOS strategy compared to the time-plan strategy, which occurs mostly on entry streams. The results are analyzed through the decomposition of cycles in phase sequences and recommendations are made for traffic control strategies.
Midenet, S.; Saunier, N. & Boillot, F. Exposure to Lateral Collision in Signalized Intersections with Protected Left Turn under Different Traffic Control Strategies Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2011 (preprint)
Open Transport Research 