Micro-Simulation Model for Assessing the Risk of Car-Pedestrian Road Accidents

The data on traffic accidents clearly points to "Black Spots" that continually cause a high rate of accidents. However, road safety research is still far from understanding why this particular place on a road is risky. The reason is the deficit of knowledge of how pedestrians and drivers interact when facing a potentially dangerous traffic situation, and in the lack of an integrated framework that relates the data on human behavior to real-world traffic situations. We tackle the problem by developing SAFEPED, a multi-agent microscopic 3D simulation of cars’ and pedestrians’ dynamics at the black spot. SAFEPAD is a test platform for evaluating experimentally estimated drivers' and pedestrians' behavioral rules and estimating accident risks in different traffic situations. It aims to analyze disadvantageous design of the Black Spot and to assess alternative architectural solutions.