Vehicle-based countermeasures for signal and stop sign violations. Task 1: Intersection control violation crash analyses. Task 2: Top-level system and human factors requirements.

The report provides the first two major task reports for a study to develop performance specifications and perform supporting objective tests for a planned field operational test (FOT) of a vehicle-based countermeasure to intersection crashes associated with light vehicle violations of stop signs and traffic signals (red lights). The envisioned system will warn drivers if they are in imminent danger of running a stop sign or signal, and is called the Intersection Crash Avoidance, Violation warning (ICAV) system. Task 1 consisted of database analyses employing primarily 1999 and 2000 General Estimates System data. This included a crossing-path crash problem size description by injury severity level, followed by increasingly detailed analyses of crash type, traffic control devices, violation distributions and types, causal factors, speed behavior, and infrastructure components. An estimated 261,000 light vehicle crashes in 1999 and 162,000 in 2000 occurred at intersections where one of the two vehicles had a stop sign and was charged with a violation. There were an estimated 133,000 crashes in 1999 and 99,000 crashes in 2000 involving traffic signal violations. These crash populations could be target crashes for ICAV. The Task 2 report includes a review of past literature relating to the stop sign/signal violation crash problem and proposed countermeasures, as well as top-level system requirements and preliminary specifications for future deployment and FOT systems, and for a testbed system to be fabricated under this project. The ICAV system for stop-sign violations is conceived as consisting of four functional subsystems: positioning, in-vehicle sensors, computations (dynamic algorithm), and driver-vehicle interface. The signal-violation system requires these same four subsystems and, in addition, a communications link with the infrastructure (the traffic signal) to determine signal phase and timing. Using this functional system concept, the report outlines the fundamental performance requirements of the deployment system and identifies knowledge gaps in these performance requirements.