For a number of reasons (level of registration, incompleteness of information, and aspects of time) analyses have been made using traffic conflicts instead of traffic accidents during recent years in traffic safety research. Also the chances of having an accident are mostly unknown to the road user. The near misses are almost the only moments at which the road user is confronted in practice with the lack of safety. The consequences of it are mostly overestimated. Risks in traffic should be clearly fixed for the chance of being involved in an accident as well as for the severity of possible consequences. The conflict method can then be very useful. The application of the conflict method is related to the detection of problems in traffic behaviour, to know how to select the appropriate measures, and to determine the effectiveness of the token measures in their relationship with traffic safety. At the moment about ten conflict observation techniques are being used in different countries. Most of them are rather subjective in the scoring of conflicts. The subjectivity of the observers can be reduced by selection and better training of the personnel.
Abstract