Published on Thursday, 25 July 2024 at 9:28:00 AM
Trialling AI software for insights into near-misses to effectively improve infrastructure which could prevent road crashes.
The Shire of Northam is participating in the Road Safety Commission’s NearMiss pilot program. The program was rolled out at the intersection of Fitzgerald and Gairdner streets, Northam, during June and it will assist the Shire in making data-driven decisions, significantly reducing project planning and design time.
The program involves AI software being used to analyse video in real-time, providing insights, severity levels, and risk ratings for near-miss events, congestion, traffic data, and safety issues. In a matter of weeks, the Shire will have information on identified high-risk areas to assist in planning for works which priorities safety. This solution is ideal for assessing road and intersection design, traffic lights, roundabouts, and signage. The insights gathered are more informative than traditional methods like road sensors, traffic counters, speed and red-light cameras, or accident reports.
The site selected was identified by the Shire as a known crash site with high crash activity (not always reported) and the cameras will be used to quantifiably assess the location. There have been five reported collisions over the past five years, however with anecdotal evidence it appears there have been several unreported incidents and near misses. A Road Safety Audit has been completed with the more significant contributing factors appearing to be:
- building on adjacent corners without truncation,
- RAV route (RAV 4 heavy vehicles servicing the Flour Mill),
- unclear/ambiguous priority, and
- avon bridge.
These factors combine to reduce sightlines, introduce footprint constraints, stacking distances and generally limit the potential list of solutions.
The cameras will be on site for a 6-8 week period, during which time data will be collected in eight second video snippets and the Shire will have access to a dashboard from which they will be able to view and analyse the collected information and use it to inform potential treatments to reduce crashes at the intersection.
For more information, visit the Shire of Northam's website.
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