Methodologies for Aggregating Indicators of Traffic Conflict

Various indicators of objective conflict have been proposed in the literature to measure the severity of traffic events. Objective conflict indicators measure various spatial and temporal aspects of proximity on the premise that proximity is a surrogate for severity. These aspects of severity may be partially overlapping and in some cases independent. Two sets of conflict indicators were used in a study conducted to demonstrate that integration of the severity cues provided by each conflict indicator could be performed to reflect better the true, yet unobservable, severity of traffic events. The first set of conflict indicators required the presence of a collision course common to the interacting road users. The second set measured severity in mere temporal proximity between road users. The study proposes a methodology with which to aggregate the event-level measurements of conflict indicators into a safety index. First, individual conflict indicator measurements are mapped into severity intervals [0, 1]. Second, these severity indices are aggregated to a safety index that includes both individual severities and exposure. The methodology is applied on individual measurements of pedestrian–vehicle conflicts.