Automated Approach for a Comprehensive Safety Assessment of Roundabouts

This paper provides a framework for analyzing safety issues at roundabouts. An automated safety analysis approach is used to detect different types of traffic conflicts, as well as the inappropriate negotiations and the gap acceptance behavior of drivers. To test the validity of the proposed method, a case study is used for a roundabout in Doha, Qatar. Seven types of traffic conflicts are studied and their severity identified using the time to collision measure. Four common types of driver inappropriate negotiations behavior are also investigated. The analysis shows that most of the inappropriate negotiations and traffic conflicts are due to drivers’ poor lane discipline which can be partially attributed to the poor lane marking. Gap acceptance behavior is also studied by identifying lead, lag and total gaps. The traffic conflicts, inappropriate negotiations, and gap acceptance results are validated by comparison with manual observations. The results of the validation process show the viability of the automated approach which produces acceptable results with less time and effort. Moreover, the data gathered using this approach provides further insights on roundabouts safety evaluation and has the potential for the assessment of roundabout design.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB75 Roundabouts.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Osama, Ahmed
  • Sayed, Tarek
  • Zaki, Mohamed H
  • Shaaban, Khaled
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automatic data collection systems; Behavior; Case studies; Drivers; Lane lines; Roundabouts
• Geographic Terms: Doha (Qatar)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01550551
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-2461
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 26 2015 9:50AM