| The primary element of proactive traffic management strategy would be model(s) that can separate 'crash prone' conditions from 'normal' traffic conditions in real-time. The aim in this research is to establish relationship(s) between historical crashes of specific types and corresponding loop detector data, which may be used as the basis for classifying real-time traffic conditions into 'normal' or 'crash prone' in the future. In this regard traffic data in this study were also collected for cases which did not lead to crashes (non-crash cases) so that the problem may be set up as a binary classification.;The first group of crashes to be analyzed were the rear-end crashes, which account to about 51% of the total crashes. Based on preliminary explorations of average traffic speeds, rear-end crashes were grouped into two mutually exclusive groups. First, those occurring under extended congestion (referred to as regime I traffic conditions) and the other which occurred with relatively free-flow conditions (referred to as regime 2 traffic conditions) prevailing 5-10 minutes before the crash.;Classification models were then developed for the next most frequent type. i.e., lane change related crashes. Based on preliminary analysis, it was concluded that the location specific characteristics, such as presence of ramps, mile-post location, etc. were not significantly associated with these crashes. Average difference between occupancies of adjacent lanes and average speeds upstream and downstream of the crash location were found significant. The significant variables were then subjected as inputs to MLP and NRBF based classifiers.;Based on the results from modeling procedure, a framework for parallel real-time application of these two sets of models (rear-end and lane-change) in the form of a system was proposed. To identify rear-end crashes, the data are first subjected to classification tree based rules to identify traffic regimes. If traffic patterns belong to regime 1, a rear-end crash warning is issued for the location. If the patterns are identified to be regime 2, then they are subjected to hybrid MLP/NRBF model employing traffic data from five surrounding traffic stations. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
