Evaluation of traffic safety, based on micro-level behavioural data: theoretical framework and first implementation

A traffic encounter between individual road users is a process of continuous interplay over time and space and may be seen as an elementary event with the potential to develop into an accident. This paper proposes a framework for organising all traffic encounters into a severity hierarchy based on some operational severity measure. A severity hierarchy provides a description of the safety situation and trade-off between safety and efficiency in the traffic system. As a first approach to study the encounter process, a set of indicators is proposed to describe an encounter. These indicators allow for a continuous description even if the relationship between the road users changes during the process (e.g., when they are on a collision course or leave it). Automated video analysis is suggested as a tool that will allow data collection for validation of the proposed theories.