1 ASSESSING THE SAFETY IMPACT OF INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS

The seriousness of road traffic accidents in terms of personal injuries, fatalities, and property damage, has been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a social and public health problem. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), based on advanced telecommunication and information technology, offer a great potential for improving the road safety situation for all types of road-users. ITS can influence all of the key macroscopic variables commonly used to describe the magnitude of the road safety problem, i.e. exposure, risk, and the severity of accidents. This paper presents an on-going multidisciplinary research project that is centered around models that describe and predict individual microscopic behaviour and patterns of interaction between different key elements of the traffic system in order to evaluate the potential safety impact of ITS applications