A considerable part of the traffic-jams on the Dutch roads is caused by incidents such as collisions, car trouble and cargo falling from trucks. The greater part of these traffic-jams is caused by accidents with passenger cars. These traffic-jams contribute to a great extent to the yearly economic loss the Netherlands suffer in traffic-jams. In addition, a traffic-jam in itself creates an unsafe traffic situation that in many cases causes collisions in the tail of the traffic-jam. This with the risk of further material damage as well as possible injuries. In order to limit the social damage by slow-moving traffic in case of accidents, the Ministry of Water Management and Public Works has resolved to have implemented Incident Management measures (IM-measures) on the main road system in the Netherlands within a few years. These IM-measures are aimed at a safe and fast follow-up of incidents by which the, because of the incident, limited flow of the other traffic is helped to get going again as soon as possible. Naturally adequate aid to victims and safety for social workers as well as the other road users need to remain guaranteed sufficiently. On the ring road of Eindhoven a pilot study was made in the autmn of 2000 in order to determine what the effect is of so-called digital video cameras on the follow-up of incidents, and if the follow-up can be accelerated by means of incident detection by cameras. The digital video camera have the possibility to detect a standstill on the road, which makes it possible to detect incidents sooner. Particularly on road stretches where incidents occur regularly, the time that can be gained by this acceleration in detection ( and with that the possible accelerated follow-up) can lead to a considerable saving of social (traffic-jam) expenses. Besides, a video camera gives a current picture of the situation near the incident so that time can possibly be gained by sending the right social workers while at the same time social workers are prevented from being sent to an incorrect location. In this study, chapter 2 will first give a description of the functioning of video detection and the systems used in the pilot. Then the research plan and the method of evaluation are described in chapter 3. Chapter 4 contains a survey of the incidents that occurred in the measuring period and that were selected for the analysis. Then the gain in time of the systems is discussed in chapters 5 and 6. After this the results of the IM-model are explained in chapter 7. In chapter 8 the users experiences are described and to conclude the conclusions and recommendations are summarised in chapter 9. (A)
Samenvatting