• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.43-56
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• 2007

Since the 1970s, along with an increasing number of motor vehicles in Korea, road crashes and casualties started to increase and eventually resulted in a serious public health problem starting from the beginning of the 1990s. Government authorities, however, have been not so proactive with reducing road crashes and injuries as well as deaths and have been reluctant to design effective safety strategies that could be established in collaboration with relevant multidisciplinary professionals. This paper aims at showing the status of road safety versus socioeconomic development in Korea and highlighting safety strategies that particularly need the participation of medical professionals. Six indicators to measure socioeconomic development and two indices for road safety were examined and international comparisons were made, finding road safety in Korea has been not corresponding to its level of development. The imbalance between socioeconomic development and road safety will certainly require the government authorities to look for effective safety strategies necessitating cooperation and collaboration with relevant experts including medical professionals. To make a provision for such needs in the near future, studies and experiences previously reported in the literature of traffic medicine and the world congresses of the International Traffic Medicine Association since 1984 were reviewed and categorized to focus on the strategies as well as measures that would be most effective in a mid-income country such as Korea.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.115-126
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• 2009

The lane-change behavior usually consists of discretionary lane-change and mandatory lane-change types. For the first type, drivers change lanes selectively to maintain their own driving condition and the second type is the case that the drivers must change the current lane, which can occur in recurrent congestion sections like merging and weaving sections. The mandatory lane-change behavior have a great effect on the operation condition of freeway. In this paper, we first generate data such as traffic volumes, speeds, densities, and the number of lane-change within the merging and weaving sections using the data of individual vehicle collected from time-lapse aerial photography. And then, the data is divided into the stable and congested flow by analyzing the speed variation pattern of individual vehicles. In addition, the number of lane-changing from ramp to mainline within every 30-meter interval is investigated before and after traffic congestion at study sites and the distribution of lane-changing at each 30-meter point is analyzed to identify the variation of lane-changing ratio depending on the stable and congested flows. To recognize the effect of mainline flow influenced by ramp flow, this study also analyzes the characteristics of the lane-changing distributions within the lanes of mainline. The purpose of this paper is to present the basic theory to be used in developing a lane-changing model at the merging and weaving sections on freeways.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.79-89
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the current right-turn operation at signalized intersections and suggest appropriate right-turn operation strategy. From field investigation, right-turn signals have not only operated various type and shape, lacking of consistency, but also there was no clear regulations or standards. It could increase drivers' confusion and cause vehicle-to-pedestrian accidents. In order to improve pedestrian safety, there is urgent need to study the regulations and standards regarding to right-turn traffic control. This study suggests appropriate right-turn signal operation strategy. In case of permissive right-turn operation, it should be stated on regulations that red light means right-turn vehicles must stop temporarily at the stop line and then turn right. Necessary conditions for installing right-turn signal for protected operation are that there should have one or more exclusive right-turn lanes and right-turn signal face should contain the lenses with three-color arrow indication. In addition, we assort right-turn operation types as permissive, protected and protected/permissive right-turn and suggest specific signal operation strategy by the types.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.157-167
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• 2011

Many problems, such as unexpected delay and collision with pedestrians or vehicles, occur generally at signalized intersections where bicycle users are frequently involved. These problems have hindered bicycle users from riding bicycles on urban highways. The aim of this study is to suggest proper traffic signal operation methods for safe and convenient highway crossing of bicycles. Three types of crossing methods at signalized intersections are proposed and analyzed: (1) indirect left turn, (2) direct left turn on an exclusive bicycle lane, and (3) direct left turn on a bicycle box. The VISSIM simulation tests were conducted based on fifty-four operation scenarios prepared by varying vehicle and bicycle traffic volumes. Both delay and the number of stops are used as the measures of effectiveness in the analysis. The results from the three-legged signalized intersections suggested that (1) the indirect left turn is appropriate when vehicle demand is high while bicycle demand is not, (2) direct left turn on an exclusive bicycle lane is appropriate when both vehicle and bicycle demands are high, and (3) direct left turn on a bicycle box is appropriate when both vehicle and bicycle demands are light.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.253-259
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• 2016

Regarding the research on lane recognition, continuous studies have been in progress for vehicles to navigate autonomously and to prevent traffic accidents, and lane recognition and detection have remarkably developed as different algorithms have appeared recently. Those studies were based on vision system and the recognition rate was improved. However, in case of driving at night or in rain, the recognition rate has not met the level at which it is satisfactory. Improving the weakness of the vision system-based lane recognition and detection, applying sensor convergence technology for the response after accident happened, among studies on lane detection, the study on the curve road detection was conducted. It proceeded to study on the curve road detection among studies on the lane recognition. In terms of the road detection, not only a straight road but also a curve road should be detected and it can be used in investigation on traffic accidents. Setting the threshold value of curvature from 0.001 to 0.06 showing the degree of the curve, it presented that it is able to compute the curve road.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.15-25
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• 2012

In order to resolve transportation system focused on vehicles which have led to all sorts of problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution and so on, Korea recently have tended to center around Transit Oriented Development(TOD) which is capable of initiating public traffic demands. It is imperative to develop objective evaluation method which is able to measure pedestrian environment and amenity in order to facilitate green transit. The purpose of this paper is to present evaluation indices and measurement framework of pedestrian environment by analyzing effect on TOD major planning factors such as diversity, density, design, and supply etc. For this, we applied evaluation index with regard to TOD planning factors, investigating connection to pedestrian and employed AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) so as to quantify the result of measurement in Jongro 3ga and Hangangjin station. As a result, we presented relationship between travel patterns of pedestrian and each TOD planning factor. More importantly, the proposed framework is expected to make the best of the visualization as well as evaluation method for the pedestrian accessibility, convenience of public transportation, and the mixed land-use patterns in subway area and transit center.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.40-51
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• 2020

Much time has passed since Korea's expressway congestion-threshold speed was revised in 2011. In the meantime, various expressway environments have changed owing to improved performance of vehicles, expanded operations of transport competition (i.e., the KTX), and increased speed limits along some expressway sections. In addition, the speed that expressway users expect to travel at is also increasing. Therefore, through a survey, this study investigates expressway users' perceptions of congestion, and reviews the adjustment of the expressway speed congestion threshold by analyzing expressway traffic flow. One result of the survey confirms that the threshold speed expressway users consider to be congestion has slightly increased. Analyzing traffic and speed data through a K-means algorithm found that the threshold speed for congestion is 60 km/h. In addition, assuming the congestion threshold speed increase from 40 km/h to 50 km/h and 60 km/h, frequently congested expressway sections are identified, determining that 50 km/h is appropriate as a congestion threshold for proper expressway mobility management.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.162-177
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• 2020

The perception of traffic environment based on various sensors in autonomous driving system has a direct relationship with driving safety. Recently, as the perception model based on deep neural network is used due to the development of machine learning/in-depth neural network technology, a the perception model training and high quality of a training dataset are required. However, there are several realistic difficulties to collect data on all situations that may occur in self-driving. The performance of the perception model may be deteriorated due to the difference between the overseas and domestic traffic environments, and data on bad weather where the sensors can not operate normally can not guarantee the qualitative part. Therefore, it is necessary to build a virtual road environment in the simulator rather than the actual road to collect the traning data. In this paper, a training dataset collection process is suggested by diversifying the weather, illumination, sensor position, type and counts of vehicles in the simulator environment that simulates the domestic road situation according to the domestic situation. In order to achieve better performance, the authors changed the domain of image to be closer to due diligence and diversified. And the performance evaluation was conducted on the test data collected in the actual road environment, and the performance was similar to that of the model learned only by the actual environmental data.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.537-546
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• 2013

Traffic congestion in existing tunnels has increased due to increased traffic volume and enlarged vehicles. Enlarging existing tunnels has advantages over constructing new tunnels by reducing land purchasing costs as well as minimizing natural environment destruction. In fact, many overseas projects for enlarging existing tunnels have been reported. Thus, it appears that the demand on enlarging existing tunnels continues to rise in Korea in near future. Nonetheless, the studies related to the enlarged tunnels have been relatively rare since there have been few tunnel enlargement projects in Korea. In the present study, the tunnel behavior and the stability of rock pillar when enlarging existing parallel tunnels were investigated by performing FE analysis and using existing theory and empirical relationships. Four different enlarging cases, depending on the enlargement types and directions, were examined in the study. According to the results, for the tunnels with the same pillar width after enlarged, the uni-laterally enlarged tunnel indicated 5 to 20% higher crown settlement compared to the bi-laterally enlarged tunnel, and for the tunnel with the narrowest pillar, the highest shotcrete stress was observed. Also, the strength/stress ratio for rock pillar was more than 1.0 for all four enlargement cases, and the Matsuda's method was found to give higher strength/stress ratio by about 50% compared to the Peck's method.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.62-73
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• 2020

Access management is aimed at preserving the road's high intercity mobility. In urbanized areas, immoderate acceleration lane-length requirements restrict the accessibility of land. Therefore, there are many opinions to revise the minimum acceleration lane-length requirement. For this purpose, it is important to diagnose the effects of slow vehicles on the mainline. This study analyzed a single merging vehicle's total delay occurrence depending on the mainline traffic flow rate and merging speed. A linear relationship was observed between the mainline traffic flow rate and total delay. As a merging speed increases gradually from 40km/h to 100km/h in 20km/h intervals, the total delay decreases by 5.0, 1.6, and 5.1 times, respectively. This shows that the ideal condition with the total delay is less than 0.5 vehicle·sec when there is no speed difference between the mainline and merging vehicle. On the other hand, given the one-second response time of drivers, the total delay occurrence was slightly low when the speed difference between the mainline and merging vehicle was less than 20km/h.