Assessing factors influencing the occurrence of traffic conflicts: a vehicle-by-vehicle approach

Abstract

This research analyzes the main factors that lead to the occurrence of traffic conflicts on the urban highway Autopista Central in Santiago, Chile. We propose a vehicle-by-vehicle approach in which we estimate the probability that each vehicle passing through each gate of Autopista Central has a conflict. This approach allows us to study variables at an individual level that have not been analyzed before using full real-world data, such as driver (age and sex) and vehicle information (type and age). We propose a Pseudo Time-to-Collision (PTTC) as a surrogate safety measure, defining different critical PTTC thresholds for each gate. Subsequently, a logistic regression model is built to understand the input variables’ influence on the probability of conflict occurrence. Our results show that men and young drivers are more likely to have a conflict. In addition, the age of the car is negatively correlated with the occurrence of conflicts.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflicts analysis
• vehicle-by-Vehicle
• pseudo time-to-collision
• logistic regression

Acknowledgments

Franco Basso gratefully acknowledges the financial support from both the Complex Engineering Systems Institute, ISCI (grant ANID PIA/PUENTE AFB230002) and from ANID-FONDECYT 1241335. Raúl Pezoa acknowledges the financial support from ANID-FONDECYT 1241913. Mauricio Varas acknowledges the financial support from ANID-FONDECYT 1241843.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To support this point, we randomly took three times the 50% of the January 2021 sample and recalibrated the model, obtaining almost the same results for the estimated coefficient.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Asociación Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [grant number: FONDECYT   1241335]; Asociación Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [grant number: FONDECYT 1241843]; Asociación Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [grant number: FONDECYT 1241913].