Abstract
The PReVENT-INTERSAFE European objective is to improve road safety by reducing or
avoiding in the future, the number of road accidents at junctions with the help of technologies.
INTERSAFE has started by a thorough understanding of accidents under study. Accident
analyses were carried out in the United Kingdom, Germany, and in France by accident
experts´ teams upon accident data available in these countries. The purpose of this paper is to
report about the accidentology work done for this INTERSAFE project.
The work was carried out according to a 3-steps schedule:
- First a statistical analysis provides INTERSAFE with an overview of the magnitude and the
conditions under which accidents at crossings and intersections occur. For example, injury
accidents at junctions represent 30% of the injury accidents in France, 61% in the UK and 42
% in Germany whereas fatalities at junctions represent 16% of the fatalities in France, 36% in
the UK and 21% in Germany. - Second, the most relevant accident situations are defined upon the pre-accidental
manoeuvres:
- A vehicle A is pulling out of a road with a road sign(mainly a stop sign) whereas
another vehicle B is coming from the right of from the left on the right of way road.
- A vehicle A is coming up to an intersection with right-of-way whereas another
vehicle B is pulling out of the intersection from the right or from the left.
- A vehicle A is pulling out of a road with a road sign (mainly a stop sign) and turning
left whereas another vehicle B is coming from the left on the perpendicular road.
- A vehicle A is coming up to an intersection with right-of-way whereas another
vehicle B is pulling out of the intersection from the right and is turning left or right.
- A vehicle A is turning left whereas another vehicle B is on the opposite direction on
the same road.
These situations represent 60-70 % of injury accidents at junctions depending on the country.
Thirdly, distributions of the main pre-crash parameters are established for each situation and
the main aspects of each scenario (i.e. type of driver failure or vehicle speed before the
rupture phase, or drivers´ reactions) can be inferred from these distributions.
All these in-depth information can then be used by engineers to address the right safety
problems at junctions.
Keywords - Road accident, Junctions, Scenarios, Safety research, Situations