Red Light Violation Characteristics Under Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions: With and Without Countdown Timers

Signalized intersections in general are provided in traffic networks with the idea of improving the safety and efficiency of traffic movement. However, there are certain types of accidents that get introduced due to the intersections and majority of them are due to red light violations. There are various measures under education, enforcement and engineering headings that are being attempted to reduce the red light violations. Provision of signal timer is one such measure and is commonly adopted in India. However, studies on red light violations under Indian traffic conditions are very scarce and none studied the effect of these timers on red light violation. Traffic heterogeneity and no lane discipline makes transferability of models developed in other countries (with more organized traffic) infeasible. The present study is an attempt in this direction to study the red light violation characteristics under Indian traffic conditions and to analyse the effect of timers on red light violation. The analysis was carried out by using the data collected from two intersections, one with timer and one without timer, in Chennai, India, using videographic technique. The results show that the red light running behavior for start and end of red without timer is significantly different. However, with the presence of countdown timer these differences become insignificant. Although presence of a specific vehicle type was not found to impact the total number of red light runners with any statistical significance, but there were some indications in the data that different vehicles inhibit different characteristics that might be influencing their propensity to run the red light.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Vanajakshi, Lelitha Devi
  • Sharma, Anuj
  • Lakshmi, R
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
• Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 13p
• Monograph Title: TRB 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Heterogeneity; Highway safety; Networks; Red interval (Traffic signal cycle); Signalized intersections; Timers; Traffic lanes; Traffic signal control systems; Traffic signal timing; Traffic violations
• Uncontrolled Terms: Countdown traffic signals
• Geographic Terms: Chennai (India)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01151195
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 10-3819
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Feb 25 2010 8:12AM