A state government transport authority wanted to understand road safety risk and Fatal and Serious Injury (FSI) risk before and after the installation of traffic calming measures.
A state government transport authority wanted to understand road safety risk and Fatal and Serious Injury (FSI) risk before and after the installation of traffic calming measures. Specifically, they were interested in analysing changes in acceleration and braking by distance (i.e., Chainage) and speed, along a length of road with known treatment locations. GHD Digital was in charge of the delivery of this project.
Using Compass connected vehicle data, GHD created a chainage graph, mapping acceleration and braking data along a length of road, pinpointing the location of existing and newly installed traffic calming measures and how behaviour changed around these sites.
They found the installations had a clearly visible and significant impact on acceleration and braking. Drivers were braking on approach to the traffic calming measures and accelerating on exit. GHD was also able to determine the distance at which drivers started to brake and/or accelerate at either side of the installations.
These curves are potentially new metrics for analysing road safety risk
GHD also compared 85th percentile speed before and after the installations. They found that there was a decrease in 85th percentile speed along the entire length of the road, not just at the treatment location.
The data allowed for more in-depth driver behaviour and FSI risk safety analysis along the entire length of the road instead of just a single point.