Republished, with kind permission, from
Traffic Engineering and Control, March 1999

In the following sections, an asterisk (*) denotes projects newly started at Leeds in 1998.

The project is studying the design of the system or systems, investigating user acceptance, predicting the savings in accidents from various types of implementation, and looking at side effects in the form of fuel consumption, emissions and the efficiency of the road network.  Driver behaviour with various forms of speed-limiter (advisory, voluntary and compulsory) is being studied both in the laboratory (using the Advanced Driving Simulator) and on real roads with a specially equipped vehicle.  The final phase of the project will examine alternative deployment strategies, will advise how automatic speed control could be implemented nationally, and provide recommendations on the possible approaches and timetables for implementation, should the decision be made to proceed with national deployment.  The initial phase of the work has been completed.  This phase has examined design concepts, studied public acceptance and made predictions on benefits (savings in accidents) and costs.

The objective of this research is to explain the differences in pedestrian risk between Portugal and the UK.  This is being done by analysing factors related to road user attitudes and behaviour.  Pedestrians in each country have been observed crossing the road at comparable sites and have been divided into two groups — those with and without a traffic conflict while crossing.  A sample of the pedestrians have been asked to complete a questionnaire concerned with their attitudes to road safety in general and to pedestrian safety and rule compliance in particular.  This approach is being used to identify the contribution of attitudes, behaviour and infrastructure in influencing risk.

The main objective of this research is to develop an automatic method of safety monitoring at Pelican crossings. This involves collecting five types of information: on pedestrian behaviour; on driver behaviour; the geometric features of roads and pedestrian facilities; signal settings; and traffic conflicts. This information has been collected synchronously through a combination of direct observation, video analysis, non-permanent tube detectors and permanent loop detectors. The work is undertaken in co-operation with Leeds City Council.  Models have been developed to enable the safety at Pelican Crossings to be predicted automatically.

The aim of MASTER was to guide EU and national decisions on speed management and speed control equipment standards.  MASTER has sought to address three questions: what are acceptable ranges of speeds; what key factors influence drivers’ choice of speed; and what are the best speed management tools and strategies.  The ITS input was to conduct a set of experiments comparing more traditional approaches with innovative methods for speed control and to assess driver behaviour on a variety of rural roads with an in-vehicle speed control system.  A simulator experiment comparing the effectiveness of speed control at sharp horizontal curves with  a combination of lining and signing and with feedback in the form of advice has been conducted.  A further experiment comparing various systems over a variety of roads, including an examination of weather-related speed control has also been conducted.  Results indicate large differences in driver behaviour depending on system functionality and the amount of autonomy left to the driver.

Road traffic incidents will have the effect of reducing traffic capacity either directly via blocked lane(s)  or indirectly via the behaviour of ‘rubbernecking’. This behaviour may then result in a secondary incident (as a the attention of drivers travelling in either direction is diverted to the incident) and also be a source of increased traffic delay.  The objectives of this research are to establish the extent of the rubber necking phenomena and develop a behaviour model to estimate vehicle’s longitudinal and lateral motion when a driver passes an incident location.  As ‘real life’ data is rare, the extent and characteristics of rubbernecking under different anticipated and unexpected conditions has been investigated using the driving simulator.  It is intended to develop an artificial neural network model that could be used to develop traffic management policies for incidents and thereby improve highway safety.

In planning for the creation and supply of, or migration to UTMC systems and equipment in an “open market”, a new approach to the development and assessment of the safety of traffic management equipment is required which takes account of the complexity and uniqueness of each system.  The safety of such traffic management systems should be a principal aspect in the assessment, so that new components or functions can be added “off the shelf”.  This project is developing a process for the development and assessment of UTMC systems based on the work of the previous work and will cover all aspects of safety, namely functional system safety, human-machine interaction (HMI) and traffic safety.  A public consultation exercise will be carried out by issuing the draft for comment to interested parties.  This will be followed by a workshop.

The main objectives of this concerted action project are: to review existing knowledge on acceptance by operators of new technologies and procedures in transport and survey attitudes of relevant social partners.  The project will pool together existing knowledge on ways to measure the likely degree of acceptability of new technologies and new procedures by transport operators and supporting staff.  Recommendations will be provided for appropriate actions which can prepare transport workers for technological and procedural change, and on how to increase the likelihood of acceptance of new technologies and procedures by transport operators and other workers.  Finally, the future research needs in the area of improving operator and worker acceptance of emerging technologies and new procedures in transport will be identified.

This project will create a European Transport Telematics Framework Architecture that will be a minimum stable framework necessary for the deployment of working and workable intelligent transport systems within the European Union until at least 2010.