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Monday, April 02, 2007 Predicting Highway CrashesA new traffic model pinpoints where and when accidents happen, flagging particularly dangerous stretches of highway.
Researchers at Ohio State University have developed computer modeling software that identifies the probability of traffic accidents at certain times and locations on state roadways. The program--the first of its kind in the nation--is based on historical crash data. It uses existing statistical and mapping software to create a color-coded geographical display of the accident-risk levels on segments of roadway throughout the state. "The model is saying, 'This area has a higher risk than this area at this specific time of having this specific type of crash,' which lets us predict where and when there are going to be higher risks of crashes," says Christopher Holloman, the project leader and the associate director of the Statistical Consulting Service in Ohio State's Department of Statistics. Currently, the model is being used by the Ohio State Highway Patrol to monitor roadways and position troopers. Eventually, the researchers would like to feed the data to drivers through mobile devices or portable navigation systems. The predictive crash model was initially developed as a tool to help the Ohio State Highway Patrol better prevent accidents and explore the reasons some roads are riskier than others. Scientists have taken the historical crash data collected over the past five years by the highway patrol, which tracks details of accidents--including time, location, weather conditions, and whether alcohol or speeding was involved--and analyzed the data for roadway trends using statistical analysis software from SAS, the Cary, NC-based software giant. The software provides an output of the numerical risk levels for every piece of roadway. So on a particular day, one could look and learn which roadways have the highest risk of, for instance, alcohol-related crashes. What makes this model novel is that scientists have now combined the statistical software with Google Earth--a program that offers an interactive map of the entire globe--to map the results as color-coded lines. Google Earth is able to perform this function because it reads the output from the statistical model in KML files; much as a Web browser reads HTML files, the KML files tell the program where on the planet to draw lines or place images, explains Holloman. "We have done reports on individual places, on a specific weekend, to look at where the most dangerous spots are for people to watch out for," he says. "We can make predictions for every major roadway in Ohio, under all possible road conditions, for every hour of the day, for every day of the week." "The main use for this type of technology, which is pretty straightforward, would be in the public sector: working with government and state departments of transportation to provide them [with] that information so they could make modifications, whether it is designs of the road or different signage, to protect drivers," says Bryan Mistele, the founder and CEO of Inrix, a startup based in Kirkland, WA, that provides real-time and predictive traffic information. Mistele finds the initial Ohio State concept intriguing. He says the next step for the scientists is to clearly indicate if higher-risk highways are correlated to the amount of traffic on the road because it is widely known that there is a significant correlation between the number of cars on the road and the propensity for accidents. By separating this information, researchers will have a better understanding of what makes certain roadways riskier than others and what type of accidents are prone to happen on these roadways. Holloman's group is continuing to work on the model to include more types of data and trends, such as where the police have been stationed and if low crash rates are related to the proximity of the highway patrol. The group also plans to study the reasons a certain roadway is more prone to alcohol-related crashes or having drivers who speed. |
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Software That Knows What You Like
11/08/2007
Comments
gwf_fly on 04/02/2007 at 2:01 PM
9
gwf_fly
jamet123 on 04/02/2007 at 5:42 PM
5
JT
http://www.edmblog.com
davidis1 on 04/04/2007 at 5:28 AM
5
Nobody told me when I moved to rural Arizona that the yellow lights would be only three seconds long.
reason I ran the red light was that I was unaccustomed to the short yellow lights since I am from New Jersey (the most densely populated state in the U.S.) The yellow lights are seven to nine seconds long there. (It's pure fiction that short yellows move more traffic. You could shorten the green light to make up for a longer yellow light and move the same number of cars. Think about it.)
If you find traffic engineering interesting, I heard of a study recently that reduced red light runners by a third simply by giving people time to react during a yellow light. Check the data. AZ has three second yellow lights and we also have the highest rate of red light violations.
It's constantly on the news and on talk radio about the violations but nobody ever makes the connection to the short yellow lights.
briang1621 on 04/05/2007 at 9:56 PM
35
Hopefully Ohio State University faculty focus their efforts on improving our ability to navigate the roadways more safely (like GPS with road danger ratings, see the link on congress’s move into this area below) but they will not improve the current roadway safety, sorry not happening! This is because each city manages their roadways and has a limited amount of manpower, resources, cash, and more importantly, questionable motivation to improve them. To illustrate how a cities can be un-motivated to increase roadway safety let me elaborate on lawsuits.
Civil lawsuits over injuries due to un-safe conditions often have extremely high settlements amounts. Thus individuals or companies are highly motivated to improve safety to avoid these highly costly lawsuits.
However, in lawsuits over injuries due to un-safe roadway conditions against a state or city, the case is often appealed repeatedly, and any settlement often do not create the increase in safety that were hoped.
Here is one well publicized example, where a bus full of baseball players in Atlanta befell a tragic ending due to an unsafe roadway. The horrendous thing was that this was a well document trouble spot (2 major fatalities at the same spot); however, it takes a tragedy of this magnitude for a major change to take place. Obviously the Georgia Department of Transportation (G.D.T.) will totally deny any statement saying that there is a design flaw because then they are liable and a law suite will ensue immediately. It is also unlikely that anyone in the G.D.T. will be held responsible for this tragedy. Finally, if you ask every driver in Atlanta who drive that section of highway, they will all say it was a matter of time till that poorly designed exit took another life. Thus, how could the G.D.T. not be aware of this danger? Now added on lack of funding and staffing problems at each state’s department of transportation and one can start to get the feel of how hard it is to improve roadway safety.
My point is that the Department of Transportation which is responsible for roadway safety in each state are well aware of the deficiencies in their road system (hence they don’t need the proof) but unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to change them.
Development in roadway safety consequently must look towards improving our ability to navigate the current roadway system (namely road navigation technologies for drivers) and not the road themselves. I am delighted to see that Congress has taken a step in that direction, I just hope they keep the pressure on.
Brian Glassman
www.techrd.com
Congresses mandate for improved auto Safety
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_bi_ge/stable_vehicles_11
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IndustryInfo/story?id=2430979&page=1
Bus Accident
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2918652&page=1