The danger of traffic is commonly determined by the occurrence of accidents. This paper presents some of the history of alternative measures for describing traffic hazards (measurement of so-called conflicts). It also gives the results of a series of research projects aimed at the development of a conflicts observation technique for the estimation of the safety of child pedestrians in residential areas. The reliability, practical applicability and validity of the technique developed prove to be satisfactory. It is concluded that the use of this technique seems to be justified for those situations in which accident rates are relatively low, e.g, in residential areas. This is not only because of the strong relationship between serious conflicts and accidents but also because other potential alternative indicators for the estimation of traffic hazards often used in practice, such as traffic volumes and subjective estimation of risk by residents, have had little success in accident prediction. For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD abstract no 265671.
Samenvatting