ANALYSIS OF CROSSING PATH CRASH COUNTERMEASURE SYSTEMS

This paper summarizes the results of an analysis of promising countermeasure systems for crossing path crashes, and thus provides a foundation for setting research priorities under the United States (U.S.) Department of Transportation’s Intelligent Vehicle Initiative. Crossing path crashes involve one moving vehicle cutting across the path of another, which amounted to 1.72 million police-reported crashes in the U.S. based on the 1998 General Estimates System crash database. Three basic countermeasure concepts and their functional requirements were developed to warn drivers of imminent collision caused by stop sign violation, red light violation, or insufficient gaps between vehicles at intersections or driveways. A survey was conducted to assess the technical viability of current systems and enabling technologies that could implement these concepts using infrastructure-based, vehicle-based, or cooperative vehicle-infrastructure systems. This paper concludes with recommendations to pursue the development of complete performance specifications and objective test procedures for promising crossing path crash countermeasure concepts.