DRIVE projects are driven by technological developments and have a scenario in which intelligent vehicles communicate and cooperate with the road infrastructure. In one group on projects, behavioural aspects and traffic safety are studied. The basic philosophy can be described as follows: present developments in road traffic informatics (RTI) will have great impact on entire traffic system. Most developments are however exclusively directed towards improvement of safety and efficiency of motor traffic, and tend to ignore vulnerable road users (VRU). RTI systems may therefore have negative safety and mobility effects for vru which can seriously impair the positive effect on the traffic system as a whole. On a system level, the VULCAN project uses a model of the traffic system of which VRU are an integral part. On a more local level, the project evaluates RTI applications in signalling and junction control in order to ascertain what benefits can be obtained for VRU by such measures. The modelling structure of VULCAN is shown. It is planned to produce a safety model which can estimate the underlying accident rate for a particular network configuration, given flows of pedestrians/cyclists and road traffic.
Samenvatting