Increasing Road Traffic Throughput Through Dynamic Traffic Accident Risk Mitigation

The introduction of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) leads to the possibility to re-evaluate many traditional functions and views of road traffic networks. The ability for vehicles and infrastructure to communicate and collaborate will enable many novel solutions for problems as diverse as collision avoidance and traffic management with the view of reducing traffic congestion, increasing the effectiveness of logistics systems etc. In this paper we introduce a novel framework that utilises VANET information to share information about risk factors among road occupants and infrastructure. We introduce the concept of risk limits as a means of traffic accident risk mitigation, whereby vehicles need to adjust their behaviour to maintain a given level of risk. We discuss determination of risk values and detail this process using the NSW traffic accident database. We show how the effects on risk of particular vehicular behaviours such as speed and headway can be calculated and use these results to modify vehicle behaviour in real time to maintain a predefined risk limit. Experiments are carried out using the Paramics Microsimulator. Our results show that it is possible to reduce the accident rate among vehicles while at the same time increasing road network throughput by exploiting the variation in risk between vehicles.