Development and Demonstration of a Novel Red Light Running Warning System

Running red traffic signals is a major cause of traffic collisions and resulting injuries and fatalities. Despite extensive prior work on systems to reduce red light violations, they continue to be a major problem in practice, partly because existing systems suffer from the flaw of providing the same guidance to all drivers. As a result, some violations are avoided, but other drivers ignore or respond inappropriately to red light running systems, resulting in safety issues overall. We present a novel method of providing accurate warnings to individual drivers to avoid the broad guidance approach of most existing systems. Recognizing if a driver will run red lights is highly dependent on signal phase and timing, traffic conditions along the road, and individual driver behavior, the proposed warning system contains three parts: a traffic prediction algorithm, an individual warning signal optimizer, and a driver warning display. The traffic prediction algorithm predicts future traffic states along the road towards the signalized intersections using the latest traffic conditions obtained through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Then, an optimization problem is formulated to compute the optimal warning signal based on predicted traffic states and driver reaction model. Finally, the optimal warning signal is shown on the display screen to advise driver on how much braking is needed to avoid running the red light. The results of both simulated driving scenarios and real-world road tests show that the proposed system provides more effective and accurate warning signals to drivers, helping them avoid running red lights.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Completed
  • Funding: $258010
  • Contract Numbers:

    1036342 WO#54

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    Local Road Research Board

    395 John Ireland Boulevard
    St. Paul, Minnesota  United States  55155-1899
  • Managing Organizations:

    Minnesota Department of Transportation

    395 John Ireland Boulevard
    St Paul, MN  United States  55155
  • Performing Organizations:

    University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

    Minneapolis, MN  United States  55455
  • Principal Investigators:

    Levin, Michael

  • Start Date: 20221215
  • Expected Completion Date: 20241231
  • Actual Completion Date: 20250203

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01836027
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: Minnesota Department of Transportation
  • Contract Numbers: 1036342 WO#54
  • Files: RIP, STATEDOT
  • Created Date: Feb 16 2022 2:17PM