The potential of micro-simulation modelling in relation to traffic safety assessment

interaction simulation. The use of micro-simulation modelling for the assessment of road traffic safety has been largely neglected by the traffic research community due to practical and conceptual problems. These problems emanate largely from the choice of methods and properties that are required to design a representative model of driver behaviour with enough detail to provide useful and relevant safety data, and also the difficulties in identifying safety indicators. For safety assessment purposes a driver model must incorporate an appropriate degree of behavioural variance to allow for “less-than-perfect ” perception, decision-making and action, thereby giving rise to different levels of accident risk in the interactions of road-users in different traffic situations. The recently started SINDI-project at the Centre for Traffic Simulation Research, Stockholm, aims to break new ground in road traffic micro-simulation for safety assessment. The primary focus is on traffic safety related to road-user interactions at urban intersections, and the possibilities to improve safety through Intelligent Transport Systems. Most critical to the success of the project is the establishment of a representative model of driver behaviour, and the identification of useful and relevant safety indicators that can be generated in the simulation and measured through empirical enquiry for model validation and calibration