Intersection Safety — the EC Project INTERSAFE

In the 6

th

Framework Program of the European Commission, the Integrated Project PReVENT includes Intersection Safety. The INTERSAFE project was created to generate a European Approach to increase the safety at intersections. The project started on the 1st of February 2004 and will end in January 2007.

The main objective of the INTERSAFE project is to

improve safety and to reduce (in the long term avoid) fatal collisions at Intersections

In order to identify the most relevant scenarios for accident prevention, a detailed accident analysis was carried out. Based on the scenarios and the driver mistakes derived from the accident analysis a basic functionality is described. It considers for example the time budget, which is available in order to warn the driver.

The importance of these accidents leads to a deeper analysis of the scenarios. An in depth analysis of available data from reconstructed accidents in France and Germany show the central position of especially two accident types:

Collisions with oncoming traffic while turning left and

Collisions with crossing traffic while turning into or straight crossing an intersection.

Additionally the importance of the actual right of way regulati0References leads to the consideration of traffic light controlled intersections. The specification of the key technology components like sensors and communication technologies will be derived from the given requirements. Altogether, about 60% — 72% of all accidents in intersections are covered directly by the selection of these three scenarios. The possible coverage of other comparable accidents needs further investigations. This paper will describe the INTERSAFE approach of intersection safety and discuss the functionality to avoid fatal accidents at intersections for the chosen scenarios in detail.