• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.132-146
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• 2017

Appropriate speed limits at a reasonable level in urban roads are highly important factors for efficient and safe movement. Thus, it is greatly necessary to develop the objective models or methodology based on engineering study considering factors such as traffic accident rates, roadside development levels, and roadway geometry characteristics etc. The purpose of this study is to develop the estimate model of appropriate speed limits at each road sections in urban roads using traffic information big data and field specific data and to review the effects of accident decrease. In this study, the estimate method of appropriate speed limits in directional two or more lanes of urban roads is reflecting features of actual variables in a form of adjustment factor on the basis of the maximum statutory speed limits. As a result of investigating and testing influential variables, the main variables to affect the operating speed are the function of road, the existence of median, the width of lane, the number of traffic entrance/exit path and the number of traffic signal or nonsignal at intersection and crosswalk. As a result of testing this model, when the differences are bigger between the real operating speed and the recommended speed limits using model developed in this study, the accident rate generally turns out to be higher. In case of using the model proposed in this study, it means accident rate can be lower. When the result of this study is applied, the speed limits of directional two or more lane roads in Seoul appears about 11km/h lower than the current speed limits. The decrease of average operating speed caused by the decrease of speed limits is 2.8km/h, and the decrease effect of whole accidents according to the decrease of speed is 18% at research road. In case that accident severity is considered, the accident decrease effects are expected to 17~24% in fatalities, 11~17% in seriously injured road user, 6~9% in slightly injured road user, 5~6% in property damage only accidents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.10a
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• pp.236-238
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• 2022

According to the current Road Traffic Act, the 2020 amendment bill is currently in effect as a system that designates vehicle types for each lane for the purpose of securing road use efficiency and traffic safety. When comparing the number of traffic accident fatalities per 10,000 vehicles in Germany and Korea, the number of traffic accident deaths in Germany is significantly lower than in Korea. The representative case of the German autobahn, which did not impose a speed limit, suggests that Korea's speeding laws are not the only answer to reducing the accident rate. The designated lane system, which is observed in accordance with the keep right principle of the Autobahn Expressway, plays a major role in reducing traffic accidents. Based on this fact, we propose a traffic enforcement system to crack down on vehicles violating the designated lane system and improve the compliance rate. We develop a designated lane enforcement system that recognizes vehicle types using Yolo5, a deep learning object recognition model, recognizes license plates and lanes using OpenCV, and stores the extracted data in the server to determine whether or not laws are violated.Accordingly, it is expected that there will be an effect of reducing the traffic accident rate through the improvement of driver's awareness and compliance rate.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.93-102
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• 2012

The frequency and severity of traffic accidents related to signalized intersections in urban areas have been more serious than those in both arterial segments and crosswalks. Especially, traffic accidents involved with injuries and fatalities have caused by traffic signal violations within intersections. Therefore, many countries including Korea have installed the red light enforcement camera (RLE) to reduce traffic accidents associated with the traffic signal violation. Meanwhile, many methodologies have been studied in terms of safety impacts estimation of red light enforcement, which, however, cannot be easy to conduct. In this study, safety impacts was estimated for intersections of Chicago downtown area using SPF models and EB approach. As a result, for all crash types and target traffic accident types such as "angle", "rear end", "sideswipe in the same and other directions", "turn", and "head on", fatal crashes were reduced by 26% and 38%. However, RLE may increase property-demage-only-crashes by 3.23% and 1.16%, respectively.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.105-116
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• 2023

The fatality rate of secondary accidents is seven times that of general traffic accidents. If limited to highways, one in four deaths are said to occur from secondary accidents. Unexpected situations which do not give drivers time to prepare are the cause of secondary accidents. This risk results in more fatalities on highways with high driving speeds. Existing studies have conducted research on traffic accidents and on secondary traffic accidents that occur after a primary traffic accident, without considering unexpected situations that may occur on the road. Therefore, to reduce damage and casualties caused by secondary accidents, there is a need to create a safe road environment by removing the possibility of causing accidents. This study analyzes whether the day of occurrence, time of occurrence, and radius of the curve of an unexpected situation are related to the occurrence of an unexpected situation. This study was based on data of accidents that occurred in 2022 on the Cheonan-Nonsan Expressway and the Seoul-Yangyang Expressway. The radius of the curve was calculated by dividing the section of the highway into straight, clothoid, and curved sections through cluster analysis. Results of the analysis indicate that the day and time of occurrence and the curve radius are associated with unexpected situations.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.61-81
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• 2024

eCall system assists traffic accident victims by connecting emergency rescue institutions with accurate accident information, helping them to identify the on-site situation in the event of a traffic accident. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Korean eCall system that reflects the requirements of domestic emergency rescue institutions and to analyze the expected effects through an integrated demonstration. The results of an integrated demonstration indicated that the communication success rate between the eCall IVS and the call center was 99.25%, and the average location information error was 1.2 m. In particular, it has been confirmed that the average location information error is less than 21.6 meters, as assessed by the Korea Communications Commission when evaluating the accuracy of domestic emergency rescue location information. When the eCall system was introduced, it was confirmed that the time from traffic accidents to hospital arrival could be shortened by 3 m 38 s for highways and 1 m 22 s for general roads. By it to traffic deaths from 2005 to 2022, it was analyzed that the number of fatalities decreased by 82,662, resulting in a reduction of approximately social costs.

• Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.13-18
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• 2016

More than 80 percent of traffic accidents related with lane departure believed to be the result of crossing the lane due to either negligence or drowsiness of the driver. Lane-departure related accident in the highway usually involve high fatality. Even though LDWS is believed to prevent accident 25% and reduce fatalities by 15% respectively, its effectiveness in performance is yet to be confirmed in many aspects. In this study, the vehicle lateral locations relative to warning zone envelop (earliest and latest warning zone) defined in ISO standard, ECE and NHTSA regulations are compared with respect to various factors including delays, vehicle speed and vehicle heading angle with respect to the lane. Since LDWS is designed to be activated at the speed over 60 km/h, vehicle speed range for the study is set to be from 60 to 100 km/h. The vehicle heading angle (yaw angle) is set to be up to 5 degree away from the lane (abrupt lane change) considering standard for lane change test using double lane-change test specification. The TLC is calculated using factors like vehicle speed, yaw angle and reaction time. In addition, the effect of vehicle type and reaction time have been considered to assess LDWS safety.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.18-34
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• 2021

Pedestrian deaths in Korea due to traffic accidents are 40 percent of the fatalities in traffic accidents, which is about twice the average of OECD member countries. To reduce severe pedestrian accidents, it is necessary to apply the accident reduction measures to high-risk drivers (novice, elderly, and commercial vehicle drivers) who are more likely to cause traffic accidents than general drivers. Therefore, this study analyzed the effect of safe driving education on high-risk drivers' behavior. Here, the safe driving education is chosen as the measure to reduce traffic accidents. As part of the study, sudden pedestrian crossing situations were implemented in the driving simulator, and the vehicle trajectory data were collected to compare the driving behavior before and after the education. Most surrogate safety measures showed no improvement in the driving behavior of novice and elderly drivers, and the effect of safe driving education was found to be significant only in the group of commercial vehicle drivers. The results implied that additional measures such as pedestrian safety infrastructure and driver assistance systems, apart from the safe driving education, may be needed for novice and elderly drivers to reduce pedestrian accidents caused by them. With the findings mentioned above, this study is expected to provide a foundation to establish a plan to reduce pedestrian accidents caused by high-risk drivers.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.53-73
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• 2023

Although it is mandatory to wear a seat belt that can minimize human injury when traffic accident occurs, the number of traffic accident casualties not wearing seat belts still accounts for a significant proportion.The seat belt wearing detection system for all seats is a system that identifies whether all seat passengers wear a seat belt and encourages their usage, also it can be a useful technical countermeasure. Firstly, this study established the viability of system implementation by assessing the factors influencing the severity of injuries in traffic accidents through the development of an ordered probit model. Analysis results showed that the use of seat belts has statistically significant effects on the severity of traffic accidents, reducing the probability of death or serious injury by 0.054 times in the event of a traffic accident. Secondly, a meta-analysis was conducted based on prior research related to seat belts and injuries in traffic accidents to estimate the expected reduction in accident severity upon the implementation of the system.The analysis of the effect of accident severity reduction revealed that wearing seat belts would lead to a 63.3% decrease in fatal accidents, with the front seats showing a reduction of 75.7% and the rear seats showing a reduction of 58.1% in fatal accidents. Lastly, Using the results of the meta-analysis and traffic accident statistics, the expected decrease in the number of traffic accident casualties with the implementation of the system was derived to analyze the traffic safety effects of the proposed detection system. The analysis demonstrated that with an increase in the adoption rate of the system, the number of casualties in accidents where seat belts were not worn decreased. Specifically, at a system adoption rate of 60%, it is anticipated that the number of fatalities would decrease by more than three times compared to the current scenario. Based on the analysis results, operational strategies for the system were proposed to increase seat belt usage rates and reduce accident severity.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-17
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• 2018

Over the past five years (2010-2014), the total number of traffic accidents has decreased from 226,878 to 223,552 with decrease of 0.37 percent each year. The death toll has also decreased from 5,505 to 4,762. However, the number of rental car accidents and fatalities has been steadily increased. Despite of its growth, no previous study has been conducted on rental car accident severity. This study analyzed data of 18,050 rental car accidents in South Korea collected from 2010 to 2014 and then processed in order to identify which factors could affect the accident severity. Seventeen factors related to rental car accident severity were grouped into four categories: driver, vehicle, roadways and environment. As a result of the ordered probit model analysis, fourteen variables excluding age, intersection, and day of week were found to affect the severity of rental car accidents. The results of the study summarized as follows. First of all, violation of traffic regulations such as speeding increase the severity of rental car accidents. Secondly, rental accident severity is higher at curved sections of complicated roadway, which the driver's field of view is impaired. The results of this study can be used to reduce the severity of rental car accidents in transportation safety.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.54-63
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• 2014

Traffic accident frequency and severity level in Korea are known to be very serious. Especially the number of pedestrian fatalities was much worse and 1.6 time higher than the OECD average. According to the National Police Agency, the flash signals are reported to have many safety benefits as well as travel time reduction, which is opposed to the foreign studies. With this background of expanding the flash signal, this research aims to investigate the overall impact of the flash signal operation on safety, investigating and comparing the accident occurrence on the flash signal and the full signal intersections. For doing this accident prediction models for both flash and full signal intersections were estimated using independent variables (geometric features and traffic volume) and 3-year (2011-2013) accident data collected in Seoul. Considering the rare and random nature of accident occurrence and overdispersion (variance > mean) of the data, the negative binomial regression model was applied. As a result, installing wider crosswalk and increasing the number of pedestrian push buttons seemed to increase the safety of the flash signal intersections. In addition, the result showed that the average accident occurrence at the flash signal intersections was higher than at the full signal-operated intersections, 9% higher with everything else the same.