The application of traffic conflicts as a diagnostic tool for road safety research still provides some problems in practice. The first requirement is a general definition of the concept "traffic conflict". As well as a summing up of the advantages and disadvantages of the use of the conflicts method in road safety research, the use of different operational definitions of the concept is treated. Some remarks on the reliability and validity of the conflicts method follows. From the current development in a number of countries of different conflicts techniques one many expect that the conflicts method can explain more of the variability in accidents than is possible with traffic intensities.
Abstract