Speed-Based Proximal Indicator for Right-Turn Crashes at Unsignalized Intersections in India
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 144, Issue 6
Abstract
Unsignalized intersections in India essentially function as uncontrolled ones due to the high prevalence of indisciplined traffic maneuverability. Right-turning vehicles from major and minor roads undertake risky crossing maneuvers in front of right-of-way vehicles by disobeying the priority rules. At such situations, nonprioritized vehicles hinder the movements of the right-of-way vehicles. Because of this, a through moving vehicle plying on the major road needs to take any evasive action to avoid an imminent collision. When the through traffic on the major road has high conflicting speed, the criticality of conflict increases, resulting into a potential crash. This study is an attempt to develop a new proximal indicator by incorporating the conflicting speed of through moving vehicle with a conventional time-proximity conflict indicator postencroachment time. Four unsignalized intersections have been selected from the National Capital Region of India. A speed parameter termed as critical speed is calculated based on the concept of braking distance and used to identify the critical conflicts. More critical conflicts are observed when the conflicting speed of through vehicles is high. Among various crossing situations, the maximum proportions of critical conflicts are found between through moving powered two wheelers (PTWs) along the major road and right-turning heavy vehicles. The conflicting speed of through moving PTW is observed to be the highest among all vehicle categories. The appropriateness of the proposed method is verified using 5 years’ crash data for right-turn right angle and right-turn head-on collisions and finding a statistically significant relationship between these right-turn-related crashes and critical crossing conflicts.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The video data used in this paper are collected as a part of an on-going research project on “Development of Indian Highway Capacity Manual (INDO-HCM),” sponsored by CSIR-Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi, India. The financial assistance provided by the sponsoring agency for traffic studies is gratefully acknowledged.
References
AASHTO. 2011. A policy on geometric design of highways and streets. 6th ed. Washington, DC: AASHTO.
Abdel-Aty, M., and J. Keller. 2005. “Exploring the overall and specific crash severity levels at signalized intersections.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 37 (3): 417–425.
Alhajyaseen, W. K. 2015. “The integration of conflict probability and severity for the safety assessment of intersections.” Arabian J. Sci. Eng. 40 (2): 421–430.
Archer, J. 2005. “Indicators for traffic safety assessment and prediction and their application in micro-simulation modelling: A study of urban and suburban intersections.” Ph.D. thesis, Centre of Transport Research, Royal Institute of Technology.
Archer, J., and W. Young. 2010. “The measurement and modelling of proximal safety measures.” Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. Transp. 163 (4): 191–201.
Ashalatha, R., and S. Chandra. 2011. “Service delay analysis at TWSC intersections through simulation.” KSCE J. Civ. Eng. 15 (2): 413–425.
Caliendo, C., and M. Guida. 2012. “Microsimulation approach for predicting crashes at unsignalized intersections using traffic conflicts.” J. Transp. Eng. 138 (12): 1453–1467.
Chin, H. C., and S. T. Quek. 1997. “Measurement of traffic conflicts.” Saf. Sci. 26 (3): 169–185.
Derakhshani, D. 2011. Introducing Autodesk Maya 2012. Hoboken, NJ: Sybex.
Fambro, D. B., K. Fitzpatrick, and R. J. Koppa. 1997. Determination of stopping sight distances. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board.
Gettman, D., and L. Head. 2003. “Surrogate safety measures from traffic simulation models.” Transp. Res. Rec. 1840: 104–115.
Golembiewski, G. A., and B. Chandler. 2011. Intersection safety: A manual for local rural road owners. Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration.
Klunder, G., A. Abdoelbasier, and B. Immers. 2006. “Development of a micro-simulation model to predict road traffic safety on intersections.” In Proc., 13th World Congress and Exhibition on Intelligent Transport Systems and Services. Netherlands: TNO Build Environment and Geo Sciences.
Mahmud, S. S., L. Ferreira, M. S. Hoque, and A. Tavassoli. 2017. “Application of proximal surrogate indicators for safety evaluation: A review of recent developments and research needs.” IATSS Res. 41 (4): 153–163.
McCarthy, J., J. Bared, W. Zhang, and M. Doctor. 2013. Public roads—Design at the crossroads. Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration.
MoRTH (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways). 2016. Road accidents in India. New Delhi, India: Government of India.
Patil, G., and D. Pawar. 2014. “Temporal and spatial gap acceptance for minor road at uncontrolled intersections in India.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2461: 129–136.
Peesapati, L., M. Hunter, and M. Rodgers. 2013. “Evaluation of post encroachment time as surrogate for opposing left-turn crashes.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2386: 42–51.
Pirdavani, A., T. Brijs, T. Bbellemans, and G. Wets. 2010. “Evaluation of traffic safety at un-signalized intersections using microsimulation: A utilization of proximal safety indicators.” Adv. Transp. Stud. 22 (22): 43–50.
Quadstone Ltd. 2002. Paramics developer suite. Internal Rep. Boston, MA: Quadstone Ltd.
Shekhar Babu, S., and P. Vedagiri. 2018. “Proactive safety evaluation of a multilane unsignalized intersection using surrogate measures.” Transp. Lett. 10 (2): 104–112.
Songchitruksa, P., and A. P. Tarko. 2006. “The extreme value theory approach to safety estimation.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 38 (4): 811–822.
Svensson, A. 1998. “A method for analysing the traffic process in a safety perspective.” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of Traffic Planning and Engineering, Lund Univ.
Vedagiri, P., and T. Pragna. 2013. “Evaluation of traffic safety at unsignalized intersection under mixed traffic conditions.” In 92nd Annual Meeting on Transportation Research Board, 1–12. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board.
Wolshon, B. 2004. Toolbox on intersection safety and design. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Univ.
Zheng, L., K. Ismail, and X. Meng. 2014. “Traffic conflict techniques for road safety analysis: Open questions and some insights.” Can. J. Civ. Eng. 41 (7): 633–641.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 7, 2017
Accepted: Oct 30, 2017
Published online: Apr 13, 2018
Published in print: Jun 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Sep 13, 2018
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.