Abstract Manager

With the advancement in the areas of telecommunications and video processing, video conflict analysis has become a source of surrogate measures of safety to supplement the collision history in transportation systems.

With the introduction of connected vehicles, however, a new data source: in-vehicle probe data has now become available in the United States and select EU countries. In 2023, Connected Vehicle data are being launched in Canada, offering Canadian transportation professionals a transformative tool for data collection and analytics across transportation safety, planning and operations for the future.

This opportunity brings about an urgent learning need about Connected Vehicle data for the Canadian transportation community so they will be prepared to leverage this emerging technology most effectively.

In the field of road safety, recent developments in Connected Vehicle data now include accurate speed, position, hard-braking, and acceleration, as well as seatbelt events and road conditions, from the vehicle onboard sensors. The data is high resolution (location data every 3 seconds), available networkwide, infrastructure-independent, and gives access to driver’s intuitive behaviours.

These advantages are making Connected Vehicle data an ideal candidate for data collection, monitoring, diagnosis, and counter measure design for safety applications. The safety metrics derived from Connected Vehicle data can also help safety professionals measure the impact of implemented initiatives, identify gaps, and determine future directions.

Using Connected Car data for safety metrics is, however, still in its infancy despite a rush of product introductions in 2022, which created a patchwork of solutions for transportation and safety professionals to navigate.

The proposed session will start with a deep dive into the different technology approaches and available safety metrics generated from Connected Vehicle data. 

The session will then cover some of the safety metrics derived from Connected Vehicle data, and unpack how they will enable public agencies to dynamically identify hotspots, including near misses, as well as safety risks and gaps at High Injury Networks, such as intersections.  

In summary, the main objectives of this presentation are:

1. Introduce what safety metrics are being derived from Connected Vehicle data to measure vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-VRU conflicts. 
2. Unpack the advantages and disadvantages of the available technology options for analyzing Connected Vehicle data in the market today.
3. Discuss the current limitations of Connected Vehicle data in generating safety metrics and an outlook for the future.