Applications of ITS in Road Accidents

APPLICATIONS OF ITS IN ROAD ACCIDENTS

ITS is an emerging transportation system which is comprised of an advanced information and  telecommunications network for users, roads and vehicles. ITS is the integrated application of advanced Technologies using electronics, computers, communications, and advanced sensors.

The areas where ITS finds applications are:

• Highway management
• Incident management
• Transit management
• Arterial management
• Emergency management
• Electronic payment
• Traveler information
• Crash prevention and safety
• Operations and maintenance
• Road weather management

The benefits of ITS are:

• Safety improvements
• Delay savings
• Throughput
• Customer satisfaction
• Cost savings
• Environmental, etc

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), based on advanced telecommunication and information technology, offers a great potential for improving the road safety situation for all types of road-use. 

ITS  can  influence  all  of  the  key  macroscopic  variables  of  the  road  safety  problem,  i.e.  exposure,  risk,  and  the  severity  of  accident.   

(PDF) Evaluation of Intelligent Transport System in Road Safety.

ITS    is  a  collective  name  for  a  number  of  technology-based approaches  that  are  designed  to  improve  the  quality,  safety and efficiency of transport networks.

Restriction of turning movements

 RESTRICTION OF TURNING MOVEMENTS

The Traffic Engineer is authorized to determine specific intersections at which the operators of vehicles shall not make a right turn, left turn, U-turn, or a right turn against a red or stop signal, and shall place proper signs and/or markings giving notice thereof.

• Raised medians are often considered as an effective technique to restrict turning movement.
• They also provide the added benefit of corridor aesthetics. 
• Turn restriction alternatives effectively address the safety and operational needs of the transportation network. 
• Turn restrictions may be located at:

• Access point
• Roadway and 
• Combined restriction configurations

• The  goal  of  imposing restriction of turning movements  is  to  save  lives  by  identifying  new  safety  strategies  that  effectively  reduce  crashes  and  to  promote  those  strategies  for  nationwide  implementation  by  providing  measures  of  their  safety  effectiveness  and  benefit–cost  (B/C)  ratios. 
• The restriction has been imposed by using physical barriers. 
• Turning movement restrictions are a type of  access  management  strategy  used  to  improve  the  safety  of  stop-controlled  intersections  and  driveways.
• Restricted  and  prohibited  turn  movements  reduce  the  number  of  turning  conflict  points  at  intersections, which are generally known to reduce crash risk. 
• The   median   physically   blocks  turns  into  and  out  of  the  intersecting   street. 
• While  restricting  turns  is  expected  to  provide  a  safety  improvement  in  most  cases,  limited  information  is  available  about  the  quantitative  safety  effects  of  these  practices  and  their  effects  on   downstream   intersections. 
• A  composite  finding  suggested  that,  in  general,  a  raised  median  is  safer  than  undivided roadways, especially on roads with more than 20,000 vehicles per day.

Methods of traffic management measures

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT MEASURES

Traffic management measures include:

• opening or closure of lanes (e.g. High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, peak lanes)
• intersection control
• ramp metering
• dynamic speed limits, etc. 

In relation to security issues, it can be thought of as re-routing, route closure, traffic information provision, reverse laning, etc. Traffic management is normally performed by traffic management centres. 

One of the main issues for traffic management is congestion. Proper traffic management can prevent congestion or reduce the consequences of congestion. For example, rerouting of the other traffic. Congestion occurs when the traffic demand exceeds the road capacity. This can occur when the traffic infrastructure capacity is not sufficient to handle normal (peak) traffic volumes (usually at bottlenecks, such as tunnels, bridges, lane-drops, on-ramps, weaving sections etc.), when the capacity is reduced by e.g. traffic incidents, road works or weather (e.g. rain, snow) or when the demand is higher than usual, e.g. in case of large events or evacuations. Solutions are therefore either reducing the traffic demand or increasing the road capacity. ---- (wikipedia search)

A methodology for traffic management in cities provides for extensive use of computer technologies.

Ttraffic management in the urban street and road network, requires a city-wide management system (intelligent transportation system, ITS).  

Traffic management tasks are not formalized but solved empirically. 

Two basic approaches to development of network mathematical models of traffic flows, based on:

• a set of analytical models and on 
• microlevel simulation models

Capabilities of various software tools have been evaluated to yield a method for forecasting network control actions affecting traffic flows, based on a piecewise-constant approximation of a traffic flow intensity function of time.

Forecasting control actions or cycle shifts to ensure coordinated control on highways is applied.

It is of practical interest to forecasting network control actions in intelligent transportation systems, including in real time and for congested sections of the street-and-road network.

Active traffic management is a method of increasing peak capacity and making traffic flows more efficient and smooth-flowing on busy roadways.

Most roadways include devices intended for traffic control, most of them involving direct communication with the road-user, such as signs, signals and pavement markings.  

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are advanced applications that provide services relating to different modes of traffic management and the ‘smarter’ use of transport networks. They are based on the transfer of information between transport systems to improved safety and performance, including traffic management systems, information systems, warning systems, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication and vehicle-to-vehicle communication.

Traffic signal controllers are electronic devices located at intersections that control the sequence of the lights. Along with computers, communications equipment, and detectors to count and measure traffic, these controllers are frequently grouped into one system allowing the control of large numbers of traffic signals at intersections approaches to expressways and motorways

 Active traffic management is a method of increasing peak capacity and making traffic flows more efficient and smooth-flowing on busy roadways. Common techniques include DMS, variable speed limits, hard-shoulder running, ramp-metering, etc.

Traffic management measures include:

• Restrictions on turning movements
• One – way streets
• Tidal-flow operations
• Exclusive bus lanes and
  
• Closing side streets
  

Examples of restrictions on turning movements include:

• Restriction on entry or turning during specified timings
•  Restrictions on right or left turns

Advantages of one-way streets are:

• Reduction in the points of conflict
• Increased capacity
• Increased speed
• Facilities the operation of a progressive signal system
• Improvement in parking facilities
• Elimination of dazzle and head-on collision

Tidal-flow operations

• Tidal flow operation is a traffic management process whereby the carriageway width is shared between the two directions of travel in near proportion to the flow in each direction. 

Exclusive Bus Lanes

• A bus lane or bus only lane is a lane restricted to buses, often on certain days and times, and generally used to speed up public transport that would be otherwise held up by traffic congestion.
• Certain other vehicles may also be permitted, such as taxis, high occupancy vehicles, motorcycles, or bicycles.

Measures in high accident zone  

• Establishing a bicycle zone
• Placing road lighting
• Making a right turn waiting area
• Designating a right turn lane
• Anti-slip coloured pavement
• Placing a right turn arrow signal on the road surface
• Drainage pavement
• Changing the location of a corner curb
• Changing the location of a pedestrian crosswalk 

Travel Demand Management 

List of Techniques commonly adopted:

• Car pooling and other ride-sharing programmes
• Peripheral parking schemes
• Chartered buses (Institutional buses) to serve areas of trip origins to common work place
• Staggering of office hours and flexible time to work
• Internal shuttle service in CBD
• Parking restraint
• Road Pricing
• Entry fee
• Priority for buses in traffic
• Restrictions on entry of trucks during day time

Traffic Demand Measures

PULL MEASURES

Pull measures aims at attracting road users to alternative modes. Examples of pull measures are:

• Traffic management
• Improvement of alternative modes
• Integrated multi-mode transport system
• New technologies
• Park and ride facilities
• Improvement of alternative modes
• Public transportation
• Para-transit
• Bicycling/walking
• Traffic management
• Effective use via traffic engineering measures

• New technologies
  
• Intelligent Transportation System
• Low emission vehicle
• New underground delivery system
  

PUSH MEASURES

 Push measures tries to demoralize car users. Examples of push measures are:

• Increasing vehicle occupancy
• Influencing time and need of travel
• Creating deterrence by introducing charges
• Imposing restrictions and
• Land use and urban planning

The following measures are taken-up for traffic management demand at the demand side

• Reducing the number of vehicles by modal change and HOV
• Redistributing the number of vehicles by changing time and space of travel

Pedestrian safety issues

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY ISSUES

Each year, more than 2,50,000 pedestrians lose their lives on the world's roads. Globally, pedestrians constitute 22% of all road deaths. Millions of people are injured in traffic related crashes while walking. 

Few people become permanently disabled due to traffic accidents causing suffering, grief along with economic hardship.

Pedestrian collisions are both predictable and preventable. 

The key risks to pedestrians are:

• driver behaviour (speeding and drunk driving)
• infrastructure (lack of side walks, crossings, raised medians)
• vehicle design (unforgiving features to pedestrians in-case they are struck)
• poor trauma care services

Pedestrian safety is described by:

• the magnitude of pedestrian deaths and injuries
• key risk factors
• ways of assessing the pedestrian safety situation in a given setting and prepare an action plan
• selection, design, implementation and evaluation of effective interventions

Pedestrian safety stresses on the importance of comprehensive and holistic approach that includes

• engineering
• legislation
• enforcement and
• behavioural measures

There exists a disproportionate involvement of pedestrians, cyclists and motorised two-wheelers in road traffic injuries. Almost 22% of people killed on world's roads are pedestrians. Governments are recommended to take into consideration the needs of all road users including pedestrians and cyclists while designing roads and related infrastructure along with land use planning and transport services.

The two principles of pedestrian safety are:

• Safe walking and
• Safe system approach

Pedestrians are increasingly susceptible to road traffic injury due to:

• dramatic growth in number of motor vehicles and frequency of their useage
• neglect of pedestrian needs in roadway design and land-use planning leading to increased susceptibility of pedestrians to road traffic injury

Pedestrian vulnerability is further heightened in settings where traffic laws are inadequately enforced
A road traffic crash is a collision or incident involving at-least one road vehicle in motion on a public road or private road to which the public has right of access, resulting in at-least one injured or killed person. Collision could be between:

• road vehicles
• road vehicles and pedestrians
• road vehicles and animals or fixed obstacles or with one road vehicle alone
• collisions include collisions between road and rail vehicles

There is a close association between the walking environment and pedestrian safety. Walking in an environment that lacks pedestrian infrastructure and that permits use of high speed vehicles increases the risk of pedestrian injury. The risk of a motor vehicle colliding with a pedestrian increases in proportion to the number of motor vehicles interacting with pedestrians.
Pedestrian safety measures improve walking environments and contribute to:

• Urban renewal
• Local economic growth
• Social cohesion
• Improved air quality and
• reduction in the harmful effects of noise

In addition, pedestrian safety measures have supplementary benefits for motorists and cyclists. Implementation of safety measures requires commitment and informed-decision making by government, industry, NGOs and international organisations.

Travel demand management

TRAVEL DEMAND MANAGEMENT

Transportation demand management (TDM), or simply demand management, is defined a set of strategies aimed at maximizing traveler choices. In the broadest sense, demand management is defined as providing travelers with effective choices to improve travel reliability.

Travel Demand Management (TDM) practice designs and executes programs that develops and implements a set of strategies that influence travel behavior change so people can get where they need to go with less cost and less impact on the environment.

Traditional and non-conventional TDM approaches include:

• ridesharing
• bicycling
• telework
• transit
• car sharing
• on-demand services and 
• real-time applications

to redistribute commuter travel across alternatives and away from daily peak periods.

Transportation Demand Management (TDM) aims to maximize the efficiency of the urban transport system using a wide range of measures that include:

• congestion pricing
• public transport improvement
• promoting non-motorised transport
• fuel taxation and
• parking management.

• TDM is also concerned with urban design and municipal planning. 
• TDM  is still a relatively underused tool despite its powerful reach and transformative potential

The main objective of Transportation Demand Management Strategies is 

• • Reducing traffic congestion
    

  • Conserving energy and reducing emissions

  • Improving community health and fitness levels

  • Achieving equity

  • Boosting urban livability

  • Solving parking problems

  • Enhancing community safety

  • Helping commuters based in rural areas

  • Making alternative transportation more affordable

  The common strategies for enacting a positive change through Transportation Demand Management (TDM) are:

  • Making information about locally available alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles easy to access and use.
  • Marketing the benefits of commuting alternatives to business owners so they encourage their employees to use them.
  • Supporting a diverse range of transportation options, including not only public transit, but also carpooling, vanpooling, ridesharing, walking, cycling, and others.
  • Incentivizing the use of smart, sustainable commuting methods.
  • Discouraging the use of single-occupancy vehicles by introducing tolls and surcharges that increase the cost gap between solo driving and other options.
  • Introducing limits on driver accessibility to key commercial areas of cities with high levels of traffic congestion.
  • Capping single-occupancy vehicle trips, or increasing the average passenger density of privately operated vehicles.
   
• The transformative power of technology is one of the most effective available tools in the fight against traffic congestion along with the environmental and social damage caused by it.
• Transportation Demand Management is an effective solution to the problems of urban transportation 

Parking enforcement and its influence on accidents

 PARKING ENFORCEMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ACCIDENTS

• The rapid urbanisation and infrastructural development that have given rise to economic growth and population explosion that have in-turn triggered a plethora of other issues. Parking is one of the most important issues from among those.
• New Motor Vehicle Act of 2019 imposes heavy fines on people who park their vehicles improperly or illegally.

According to the New Motor Vehicle Act of 2019, the following activities are illegal with respect to parking:

• • Abandoning or parking vehicle/trailer at a public place where it may cause obstruction, inconvenience, or puts other people in danger
  • Parking in the no parking zone or places in which parking is prohibited
  • Parking on footpaths or far away from the footpaths
  • On private properties without the owner’s consent
  • On the main road or roads with high-speed traffic
  • On the wrong side of the roadOn the path that has unbroken white lines in the centre
  • In front of the entrance of any premises
  • Near bus stops, schools, or hospital entrances
  • In front of any road signs that could possibly be obstructed with your vehicle
  • Near road crossings, a bend, top of a hill, or near/and on the bridge
  • Near any traffic signal or pedestrian crossings 

  Study on the effect of hefty fines on the  number of traffic accidents and fatalities reveals that it is short-lived and ineffective. The government assumed that imposing fines would make the drivers more careful thereby reducing accidents. Initially road accidents declined but the deterrence effect of penalties was short-lived. One of the causative factors was inability to introduce the law uniformly throughout the country. It was observed that there was an increase in death due to dangerous driving and over-speeding.

  Higher traffic density was assumed to be one of the factors contributing to increased accidents despite imposition of hefty fines. Highways are the deadliest of all roads. The risk on highways is mitigated through electronic enforcement which is mandated by the motor vehicles act. However, the problem lies in non-uniform implementation across the country.
  

Parking

PARKING

•  Parking is an essential component of the transportation system.
• More Parking supply is a magnet for more vehicles. 
• Abundant parking supply gives rise to more parking demand and the vicious demand-supply cycle goes on.  
• A typical vehicle usually needs three different parking spaces
• one at the owner’s residence, 
• second at owner’s office/business place and 
• third at recreational/entertainment facilities. 

• Parking facilities are a major cost to society. 
• As the numbers of vehicles in the city explode, parking becomes a public nuisance, swallowing all available spaces meant for other road users as well as creating a demand for all available open spaces to be turned into parking lots. 
• One car parking occupies space equivalent to one affordable housing unit in India.
• Traffic management and parking policy are closely interlinked. 
• Rather than having a reactive parking policy, one that constantly changes with the ever-increasing numbers of vehicles, the policy itself needs to ensure a reduction in the need for parking and supports more strategic planning objectives. 
• It is therefore necessary to strike a balance between the need to provide parking space and the need to locate it in such a manner as to encourage the use of sustainable modes of transport. 
• Parking spaces (on-street and off-street) have to be selected so as to have least impact on the flow of traffic. 
• The parking policy should encourage  use of alternative modes of transport and reduce motor vehicle use (thereby reducing traffic congestion, accidents and pollution). 
• It should have the ability to accommodate new traffic management concepts and respond to traffic problems. 
• It should promote appropriate use of land with promotion of environment friendly measures. 
• It should discourage the use of private mode of transport while encouraging efficient use of available parking spaces, aid in evolving a better transportation system, build a strategy to reduce congestion, pollution, and help the public transport system to grow.
• The policy should help the city in becoming more ‘people friendly’ than ‘vehicle friendly’.
•  The creation of parking infrastructure requires not only funds and technology but also cooperation of vehicle owners. 
• Concepts like
•  car free day,
•  congestion taxes,
•  vehicle free zones etc. need to be promoted by such interest groups. 

• Public education, awareness campaigns and public participation programmes  play an important role establishing a new policy.
• There can be many types of parking problems, including
• inadequate or excessive supply, 
• too low or high prices inadequate user information, and
• inefficient management. 

• Too much of parking supply is harmful. 
• Parking requirements should reflect each particular situation, and should be applied flexibly. 
• As much as possible, users should pay directly for parking facilities. 
• Parking should be regulated to favour higher priority uses and encourage efficiency. 
• Innovative concepts for traffic demand management should be applauded and adopted. 
• Parking management programs should be widely applied to prevent parking problems. 
• Parking management is a tool of travel demand management. 
• It complements sustainable transport initiatives and hence should be implemented in a parallel manner. 
• Development of ‘parking-only’ structures is more appropriate while commercial development in parking structures should not be permitted. 
• Multi-storey parking should be complemented by limited, time-slotted on-street parking and higher rates. 
• Without imposing these measures, multi-storey parking will fail to reduce congestion on the streets and will be a futile exercise.