University of Twente Student Theses
Factors that influence the severity of conflicts at signalised intersections
Hollander, A.P.M. (2023) Factors that influence the severity of conflicts at signalised intersections.
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| Abstract: | In the period between 2015 and 2019, 54% of all crashes in the Netherlands in which cyclists were killed happened at intersections (SWOV, 2022). To decrease the number of crashes between cyclists and motorized vehicles at intersections, research should be done on which factors influence traffic safety at intersections. Last year, SWOV, a national scientific institute for road safety in the Netherlands, started a research project to investigate traffic safety at intersections in the Netherlands by making and analysing video footage of three intersections in the region of The Hague. The video footage made by SWOV is used in this report to research which factors influence the severity of conflicts at signalised intersections between cyclists and motorized vehicles. In this bachelor thesis, conflicts are understood as a situation where there was almost a crash, but by taking actions such as braking the crash was avoided just in time. It is chosen to look at conflicts instead of crashes in this research since more conflict data is available than crash data. Furthermore, in the literature, it is shown that conflict data is a good indicator of traffic safety. A literature study is conducted which shows that several indicators can be used to define the severity of conflict. However, there is no consensus among researchers on which method is the most useful to determine the severity of conflicts. In some studies, the Post Encroachment Time (PET) is used to determine the severity level of a conflict. However, from this research, it can be concluded that the severity of a conflict cannot fully be determined by solely using the PET value, since it is observed in the video data of SWOV that sometimes the PET value is low while the conflict is not severe. Therefore, it is chosen in this research to create a method inspired by the Dutch Traffic Conflict Technique to determine the severity of conflicts based on the possibility that the conflict will develop into a collision and the potential conflict consequences. Furthermore, a literature review is done which shows that a lot of factors can influence the severity of conflicts at intersections such as intersection design, human factors, environment, and vehicle speed. However, in this research limited data is available which makes it difficult to examine all factors that can influence the severity of conflicts at signalised intersections. For instance, based on the available data nothing can be said about the influence of intersection design on the severity of conflicts at intersections. The factors that can be observed from the video footage are factors such as vehicle speed, traffic intensity, time of day, light intensity, cycling in groups, type of cyclist, traffic offences, who breaks the traffic rules and who goes first (cyclist or motorized vehicle). Around 300 conflicts are watched from the video footage and for all these conflicts information is recorded about the factors that can possibly influence the severity of the conflict. Subsequently, this data obtained from the video footage is analysed with the help of descriptive statistics and a multinomial logistic regression model. Based on this analysis it can be concluded that the factors ‘motorized vehicle speed’, ‘cycling alone’, 'cyclist from standstill', 'type of cyclist' and 'red light violation cyclist' influence the severity level of conflicts between cyclists and motorized vehicles at signalised intersections. Furthermore, it can be concluded that more data is needed to determine whether other factors also have an impact on conflict severity. Therefore, it is recommended to obtain more video footage from different view angles for different intersections to examine which other factors have a significant effect on the severity of conflicts at signalised intersections between cyclists and motorized vehicles. Besides, it is recommended to watch more video footage to decrease the uncertainty of the research. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Programme: | Civil Engineering BSc (56952) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/95298 |
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