Can We Combine Technology and Common Sense to Speed Up Pedestrian Safety?

There is a worldwide movement to eliminate traffic fatalities, it’s called Vision Zero. An important piece of the puzzle is improving pedestrian safety. To do that we must focus on intersection design. So far that has been an insanely slow and costly process that relies on people dying so that the data can be collected. Tarek Sayed has created a system for using video that can reduce years of data collection to a few hours, and relies on near-misses to identify problems, rather than waiting for collisions and deaths.

The Old Way

Intersection and road design for safety is often entirely theoretical and worked out “on paper” by engineers. They typically use computer models that have inaccurate or incomplete parameters plugged in, rather than going out into the field and looking at the situation with their own eyes to see how things really are and what is actually going wrong. Even with all the facts plugged in correctly, a computer’s ability to predict human behavior is limited at best.

Oh, and before they can start coming up with a plan to fix a dangerous intersection, they need about three years’ worth of crash data to work with. That’s three years of pedestrian deaths that they can study.

The Camera System

Sayed’s camera system also uses computers, but it uses real-time video footage of near-misses, to quickly find problems. It doesn’t need special cameras. It can use existing traffic cameras or new cameras off-the-shelf. The computer monitors the camera, identifying near-misses and the behaviors involved with decent accuracy.

The system is called “computer vision and automated safety analysis”. It has been used in 10 countries, and it works. In Edmonton, collisions were reduced by 92% at an intersection that was redesigned based on analysis with the system.

And there’s another advantage. The video can easily be shown to decision makers, so they can see the problem. It’s much more persuasive than a bunch of numbers and a written description. They can see when changing an intersection is just plain common sense.

If you or someone you love has been injured or killed in a pedestrian accident contact one of the attorneys in our directory. Learn more about pedestrian safety.