Publication Year:
2021 Road Safety Award
Prevailing practice in road safety management is generally reliant on crash reporting undertaken by responding law enforcement officers. While useful, this type of data has inherent limitations, not least of which being that it is reactive. Transportation agencies, for example, often only identify dangerous hot spots after years of crash reports indicate some kind of anomaly about the location.
The Vision Zero movement, with its goal to eliminate fatal and serious-injury collisions, encourages communities to build a future in which validated, data-driven preventive steps can be taken long before crashes, deaths, and serious injuries occur. One promising approach, traffic conflict analysis, leverages cloud computing, artificial intelligence and video analytics, and offers predictive insight into when, where, and why crashes are most likely to occur.