Automated Road Safety Analysis Using Computer Vision Techniques
Nicolas Saunier, Tarek Sayed, Karim Ismail · 18th ITS World CongressTransCoreITS AmericaERTICO - ITS EuropeITS Asia-Pacific · 2010
Traffic safety analysis has often been undertaken using historical collision data. However, there are well-recognized availability and quality problems associated with collision data. In addition, the use of collision records for safety analysis is reactive: a significant number of collisions has to be recorded before action is taken. Therefore, the observation of traffic conflicts has been advocated as a complementary approach to analyze traffic safety. However, incomplete conceptualization, and the cost of training observers and collecting conflict data have been factors inhibiting extensive application of the technique. Therefore, the successful automation of extracting conflicts from video sensors data using computer vision techniques can have practical benefits for traffic safety analysis. This paper describes a comprehensive system for automated road safety analysis using video sensors. The system automatically detects traffic conflicts in video data and calculates several conflict indicators. The paper describes several applications of the automated safety analysis system including detecting pedestrian/vehicle conflicts, before and after safety evaluation of a right-turn treatment, and a diagnostic safety study of an accident prone location.