Enhancing Safe Traffic Operations Using Connected Vehicles Data and Technologies

Li, Zhibin; Wang, Yinhai; Hajbabaie, Ali; Hajibabai, Leila · 2017 · ROSA P / Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) (UTC)

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Summary

This research addresses the safety gap in mixed-use roadway networks where conflicts occur between motorized vehicles and non-motorized users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists. While existing literature extensively covers vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, the safety benefits of vehicle-to-device (V2X) communications remain underexplored. The study aims to utilize connected vehicle (CV) data to identify conflict-prone locations and alert users prior to potential collisions, enabling preventative actions. The motivation stems from high pedestrian injury and fatality rates, particularly in scenarios involving through-moving vehicles and crossing pedestrians, often exacerbated by visibility issues or driver distraction. To achieve this, the authors developed a comprehensive system comprising hardware, software, and simulation components. First, they designed a cost-effective, solar-powered communication node device called the Smart Road Sticker (SRS). This lightweight device communicates with connected vehicles via LoRa and Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), while connecting with pedestrians, bicyclists, and unconnected vehicles through Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices. A corresponding mobile application was created to facilitate two-way communication between the SRS and users. Additionally, a crash prediction algorithm was developed using surrogate safety measures, specifically Time to Collision (TTC), to identify unsafe conditions and determine appropriate safety countermeasures. The system’s efficacy was evaluated using a connected vehicle simulation test bed established in VISSIM, which modeled various traffic volumes, landscape conditions, and penetration rates of connected devices. The simulation results demonstrated that the number of conflicts is directly related to traffic volume and inversely related to the penetration rate of connected devices. Specifically, increasing the volume of pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles led to a direct increase in the number of conflicts. Conversely, higher penetration rates of connected devices significantly reduced the frequency of conflicts. The study identified that conflicts between through-moving vehicles and crossing pedestrians were the most frequent, attributed to through-movements comprising 70 percent of total vehicle volumes. Increasing the penetration rate effectively mitigated these through-movement conflicts, as well as conflicts associated with left and right turns. The findings confirm that the proposed V2X methodology can enhance situational awareness and reduce conflict frequency in mixed-use environments. The significance of this work lies in its contribution to the under-researched field of V2X safety applications. By providing a functional prototype (the SRS) and a validated algorithm, the study offers a practical framework for integrating non-motorized users into the connected vehicle ecosystem. The results imply that widespread adoption of such communication nodes can substantially improve traffic safety by proactively warning users of imminent hazards, particularly in high-volume scenarios where traditional V2V and V2I systems may fail to address pedestrian-vehicle interactions. This approach supports the development of safer, more inclusive transportation systems that leverage existing mobile technology to bridge the connectivity gap for vulnerable road users.

Key finding

The number of vehicle-pedestrian conflicts increased as the penetration rate of connected devices decreased and as traffic volumes increased.

Methodology

simulator

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• v2x connected vehicle
• telematics crash prediction
• naturalistic crash near crash
• vru facing ehmi
• driver vru interaction
• vru crash typology

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence
• Methodological Resource: dataset resource