Estimation of rear-end crash potential using vehicle trajectory data

Recent advancement in traffic surveillance systems has allowed for obtaining more detailed vehicular movement such as individual vehicle trajectory data. Understanding the characteristics of interactions between leading vehicle and following in the traffic flow stream is a backbone for designing and evaluating more sophisticated traffic and vehicle control strategies. This study proposes a methodology for estimating rear-end crash potential, as a probabilistic measure, in real time based on the analysis of vehicular movements. The methodology presented in this study consists of two components. The first estimates the probability that a vehicle's trajectory belonging to either 'changing lane' or 'going straight'. A binary logistic regression (BLR) is used to model the lane-changing decision of the subject vehicle. The other component derives crash probability by an exponential decay function using time-to-collision (TTC) between the subject vehicle and the front vehicle. Also, an aggregated measure, crash risk index (CRI) is used in the analysis to accumulate rear-end crash potential for each subject vehicle. The result of this study can be used in developing traffic control and information systems, in particular, for crash prevention. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.