AUTOMATED ASSESSMENT OF INCONSISTENCY FOR CRASH

ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY ON NH66

Shilpa R Nair1*, and B. K. Bhavathrathan2

1*
Corresponding Author, IIT Palakkad, Kerala, 101814003@smail.iitpkd.ac.in
2
IIT Palakkad, Kerala, bhavathrathan@iitpkd.ac.in

ABSTRACT: Road inconsistency is a widely accepted proactive surrogate measure of

crash analysis. Inconsistency measures have showed high correlation with crash occurrence
and have been included in safety performance functions for the prediction of accidents. The
notion of inconsistency well defines the interaction between road, driver and vehicle. Speed
based inconsistency measures are widely used in crash studies since speed is a collective
representation of several factors on the road. This study proposes an inconsistency measured
in terms of maximum safe speed and operating speed. Maximum safe speed calculated based
on geometric attributes of road represents the infrastructural supply and operating speed
represents the driver’s demand. Estimation of road geometry over a regional scale is
laborious when manually done during local surveys. Hence, we present a method for
automated assessment of inconsistency with remote geometry extraction using spatial
analysis techniques of geographical information system (GIS). As a case study, National
Highway (NH) 66 running north-south over a length of 669 km in Kerala state is considered.
Maximum safe speed is calculated based of sight distance and curvature. Road network,
building shapefile and digital elevation model (DEM) converted to Triangular Integrated
Network (TIN) are used as inputs for the estimation of available sight distance using the 3D-
analyst tools in GIS. Radius of curvature is determined using ROad Curvature Analyst
(ROCA), an add-in toolbox in GIS. A crowd-sourced speed data is also incorporated into
the analysis framework to locate inconsistent sections on NH 66. The historical crash data
for NH66 is used to study the relation of spread of inconsistency with crash occurrence. The
automated inconsistency assessment opens up the potential for global crash analysis. This
study demonstrates the employability of GIS platform for the analysis of inconsistency in
road safety.

1 INTRODUCTION

Crash analysis monitors the road-driver-vehicle elements of the driving system to discover
the association of each element in the system with crash. Studies have recognized the
significant influence of road geometry, traffic, driver behaviour, road side environment in
crash occurrence. However, this influence can be better explained using the interaction
effects of elements because crash commonly occurs when the coordination among the
interlinked system fails. Researchers define these failures as road inconsistency and it is
widely accepted proactive surrogate measure in safety evaluation.
Road inconsistency can be defined as location or combination of adjacent locations that
violates driver expectancy which in-turn, may surprise drivers’ and make them drive in an
unsafe manner (Messer, 1980). Road inconsistency evaluation can be classified as two
dimensional i.e, inconsistency at a section of road and inconsistency measured along
a stretch of road. Inconsistency along a stretch of road accounts for the variation in
road elements along the path (McFadden and Elefteriadou,2000; Polus and Mattar-
Habib,2004; Llopis-Castelló et al.,2018a; Llopis-Castelló et al.,2018b). Whereas,
inconsistency at a section accounts for the demand-supply parity. This mismatch
between road behaviour and driver expectancy are measured using different indicators and
these indicators have been used in the development of safety performance functions for crash
analysis (Lamm et al. ,1995; Wu et al.,2013).
Indicators used for road inconsistency assessment includes alignment indices, driver
workload, vehicle stability and speed-based inconsistency. In comparison to all other
consistency measures employed in safety analysis, change in the operating speed is a clear
indicator of inconsistency since speed alone is directly related to crashes (Zegeer et al.,
1991). The driver expectancy or a drivers’ decision on speed has been widely represented
using the operating speed which is an aggregate average drivers’ speed choice based his
assumptions and experience. Technically, 85th percentile speed from a sample of observed
speed is the descriptive statistic for operating speed. Operating speed at a segment and its
variation along a road length captures the extend of inconsistency on the road. Design speed
and speed limit are the other two speed factors used along with operating speed in crash
analysis. These factors are part of infrastructure that interact with operating speed and defines
inconsistencies. Previously, Castro and De Santos-Berbel (2015) identified design
inconsistencies on the road sections, using the Highway Design Analysis (HDA) software
add-in tool implemented on ArcGIS. The authors defined inconsistency as the difference
between design speed and operating speed. The difference in operating speed in adjacent
segments was also used as an additional criterion to flag inconsistency.
Design speed is a clear portrayal of safe speed on the road. However, road network such as
in Kerala have undergone gradual development process thus can be termed as organic road.
The organic nature of roads often constricts the authorities from sticking to the specified
standards. Highway features may change after construction due to gradual up-gradation and
maintenance activities. Similarly, roadside settlements affect sight distance and offset
distance in the post-construction stages. Therefore, it is more suitable that we estimate speed
from road geometry in its existing condition. Analysis of inconsistencies is often local due to
the laborious nature of work. Therefore, an automated consistency assessment opens up the
potential for a global analysis of safety.
2 OBJECTIVES

This paper introduces a methodology for the remote assessment of inconsistency, and
employs it for safety evaluation. The proposed inconsistency measure captures the demand-
supply gap, in terms of maximum safe speed and operating speed. Maximum safe speed is
calculated based on road geometry, and represents the supply, while operating speed
represents the drivers’ demand. For the crash analysis, the study aims to visually analyze the
influence of spatial distribution of inconsistencies on the entire road stretch, on crash
occurrence. If there exist a relation between spatial distribution of inconsistencies and crash
occurrence on road network, this would help in proper allotment of resources for safety
management. The zoomed-out analysis on crash records would further help in causal
analyses to undermine the macro-level causal factors of crashes. The remotely assessed
inconsistency opens up the potential to be used as a proxy in the absence of historic crash
data.
3 METHODOLOGY

Speed based road inconsistency assessment on road sections require information on the
speed demanded by drivers’ and speed supplied by the infrastructure. Operating speed
captures the speed demanded and design speed represents the supply. In case of organic road,
road attributes, especially the geometry differs widely affecting both operating speed and
design speed. Therefore, for the evaluation of speed-based inconsistency, section-wise
geometric attributes should be estimated. This can be done either using project drawings,
local survey or remote survey. However, when it comes to safety analysis on a regional scale,
surveying each road section and maintaining a database is laborious. Hence, the other
alternative would be remote estimation of geometry.

Geometric elements of roads are designed based on the choice of design speed. However,
this does not stay constant in case of roads that gradually change over time. In such cases,
the maximum safe speed keeps varying across the road alignment. Therefore, the existing
road condition and its geometry should be considered, and the maximum safe speed of the
road shall be calculated using the basic physical equations. Operating speed representing the
drivers’ expectancy has been found to be significantly influenced by the geometric elements
of road. However, this might differ from the maximum safe speed on the road. Operating
speed is influenced by adjacent sections and other corridor attributes that have not been
used in the Newtonian equations of speed. This mismatch in the speed at a location can be
technically termed as inconsistency.

Geometric attributes such as curvature, sight distance, gradient can be used to find the
maximum safe speed on the road. Spatial analysis platforms such as Geographical
Information System (GIS) enable extraction of spatial data on geometric and topological
properties. For each road segment, the maximum safe speed can be calculated as the function
of physically possible speed calculated using road geometry. On the other hand, crowd-
sourced speed can be used as a proxy for operating speed. Thereafter, the inconsistency can be
measured as a function of crowd-sourced speed and maximum safe speed. Segments with a
crowd-sourced speed greater than maximum safe speed are tagged inconsistent.

The other relevant statistics required for the analysis is crash data. In developed economies,
there exist open sources of crash data such as NASS General Estimate System (NASS-GES)
maintained by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of USDOT, State Data
System (SDS) by National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) in the US, Highway
Safety Information System (HSIS) by FHWA, Data.gov by U.S. General Services
Administration, Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS) by University of Alabama, etc.
However, data collection, maintenance, and public distribution of crash data are yet to be
popular in India. Some organizations, for example the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA),
have been compiling the state crash data recently. The data includes details on the location of
crashes, number of vehicles involved, type of vehicles involved, number of injured, cause of
crashes, etc. The digitized data of crash location can be overlaid on to the inconsistencies
identified. The interrelation between inconsistency and crash would represent a pattern in
the network. The detailed framework of methodology for the evaluation of inconsistency is
given in the following subsections.
3.1 Automated Data Extraction using GIS

Sight distance is an important element in road design. Safe maneuverings on the road can be
assured when the minimum sight distance available on the road is greater than the required
overhead distance for the driver to negotiate different segments. The deficiency in sight
distance affects the driving efficiency of driver or may even lead to collisions. Measuring
sight distance along the road can help estimate the maximum safe speed on the road. Road
safety audits include measuring and ensuring minimum sight distance, which requires field
visit and graphic analysis of project drawings. Although these practices are in effect, it needs
time and effort. Thus, on a network scale, an automated remote assessment of available sight
distance is required, and in recent years, GIS platform has been widely used for the same
(Castro et al., 2011; Castro et al., 2014; Castro et al., 2016; Gargoum et al., 2018).

Available Sight Distance (ASD) is defined as the available visible distance along the path
ahead of the driver. Therefore, considering different points along the road and checking the
visibility of each point ahead of an observer point would fetch the ASD (Figure 1). Castro et
al. (2014) adopted a similar approach of sight distance estimation using GIS tool. The
visibility of multiple target points from a single observer point was assessed, and the distance
between the observer and last visible point is taken as the ASD. In the present study, we
considered the same methodology for the estimation of ASD. Figure 2 represent the flowchart
for ASD estimation. To carry out ASD calculations, road shapefile (polyline), TIN file
created using digital elevation model (DEM) of Kerala, and building shapefile (polygon) are
used. The DEM for Kerala is provided by Bhuvan, Indian geo-portal developed by Indian
Space Research Organization. With the advent of image classification techniques using deep
learning algorithm, a number of research studies have been done for extraction of building
and road footprints, which would be highly recommendable for the methodology. However,
in the present study, road shapefile and building shapefile are availed from Open Street Map
(OSM) corrected based on earth observation using google earth globe have been used. The
polyline shapefile for road network is assumed to be representing the vehicle path. ASD is
evaluated using ‘create line of sight’ and ‘Line of sight’ tools available in the extension
of ArcGIS ‘3D Analyst’ as shown in Figure 3. Line of sight tool returns a Boolean value
(either 0 or 1) to each target point assigned to an observer point. When the first invisible
point is encountered, the ASD is determined as the curvilinear distance between the observer
point and the last visible point. It is assumed that all points within a road segment have the
same ASD as calculated for the starting point of the segment.

Roadway curvature is the other road geometric factor that controls the maximum safe speed
on the road. Horizontal curves are designed to enable smooth transitions between straight
segments. Safety studies have majorly inferred high collision rates at horizontal curves
(Fitzpatrick, 2000; Krammes et al., 1995). Evaluating the curve radius can help estimate the
negotiable speed on the existing road. However, large scale estimation requires an efficient
automated assessment. For the curve geometry estimation, the study employs an add-in GIS
toolbox ROad Curvature Analyst (ROCA) developed by Bíl et al. (2018). This method
classifies road segments as tangents and curves using digital vector data. Explanatory
variable such as bearing angle, the sum of three consecutive bearing angles, the radius of
osculating circle, the radius of circumscribed circle, distance between two consecutive points
are used for the classification of a road segment as curve or tangent. ROCA toolbox
environment requires road line feature as the input. The maximum radius for the
classification can be specified, i.e., the curvature with a radius more than the maximum radius
will be classified as tangent by the tool.

Figure 1. 3D estimation of available sight distance

Figure 2. Flowchart for sight distance extraction

 Figure 3. Sight distance estimation using GIS

3.2 Computation of maximum safe speed

Using the physical equation for stopping sight distance and road curvature, the maximum
safe speed w.r.t both attributes is estimated. The maximum safe speed on a segment is
considered as the minimum of safe speed obtained from both the above geometric attributes.
The safe speed for the available sight distance is calculated using equation 1.
𝑉2
SSD = 𝑉𝑡 + (1)
2𝑔𝑓
where, SSD = stopping sight distance, V = speed of the vehicle, t = reaction time of the
driver (assigned as 2sec), g = acceleration due to gravity and f = longitudinal friction
coefficient (assigned as 0.35). Essentially the left-hand side of equation is replaced with the
available sight distance. so as to find the safe speed with which a vehicle can drive and stop within
the available sight distance when an obstacle appears on the road. The safe speed on the curve is
calculated using equation 2,
𝑉2
𝑒+𝑓= (2)
𝑔𝑅
where, v= safe speed of vehicle, R = radius of curve, g = acceleration due to gravity, e =
super elevation (assigned as 7 percent), f = lateral coefficient of friction (assigned as 0.15).
3.3 Crowd-sourced Speed as Proxy for Operating Speed
The non-uniformity of attributes and variation of influential factors on road network deprives
the usage of operating speed prediction model for the whole stretch of road. As a feasible
alternative, the google travel time can be used as the measure of operating speed. Google
uses GPS tracking system to estimate the travel time and the GPA data from each individual
user is taken by Google Maps for the calculation of traffic and travel time between origins
and destinations. For the extraction of travel time, the lat long data of endpoints of each
section is required. The travel time between these endpoints can be studied at different time
period of the day. Extraction of travel time is done using google sheet script tool coded with
java-script. An average speed considering both peak and non-peak hour on a week day and
a weekend has been used as the crowd-sourced speed.

Figure 4. Flowchart for identifying inconsistent section

3.4 Identifying Inconsistent Sections of Road

For the proposed methodology, operating speed is treated as a factor that represents the
demand of driver, whereas maximum safe speed describes the road behavior. Herein, the
mismatch between these speed measures is considered as the inconsistency. It is important
to spot-out such locations on the road network. Inconsistent regions might be highly prone
to crash since road geometry fails to cater to users’ needs. The flowchart for identifying
inconsistent sections is presented in Figure 4.
The maximum safe speed on a road segment can be analyzed based on the estimates of sight
distance and curve radius discussed in the previous section. Maximum safe speed is taken as
the minimum of safe speed calculated based on ASD (VASD) and curve radius (VR). A section
can be tagged as inconsistent when the maximum safe speed is less than the crowd-sourced
based speed extracted from Google Map.
4 CASE STUDY

4.1 Study Area

The methodology outlined in the previous section is applied on National Highway 66

(NH66) running across Kerala. NH66 covers 699km extending from Parashala in the south
to Thalapady in the north, as shown in Figure 5. With varying topology and settlement
pattern, this road has undergone gradual development over years. The corridors of NH66 run
across different types of land use and landscapes. Certain stretches of NH66 has been
upgraded to four lanes with proper divided medians and markings, whereas the remaining
are two-lane undivided.

Figure 5. Study section - NH 66

4.2 Inconsistencies Identified

For the remote extraction of section-wise geometry, the road was classified as curve and
tangent sections using ROCA toolbox. For the estimation of sight distance, the segments
were further divided into section of 15m. Each road line segment was converted to point
features and assigned elevation attribute using DEM. From the radius and sight distance, the
maximum safe speed is calculated using Newtonian equations. The lat-long details of each
point are used for the estimation of crowd-sourced speed from google map. Road sections
are then tagged as inconsistent if maximum safe speed is less than the crowd-sourced speed.
It was observed that the 58% of the road section where inconsistent. The closeness of
inconsistencies was analyzed and manually clustered. The density of distribution of
inconsistent sections vary from 2 per km to 40 per km along the road stretch.
 Figure 6. Crash analysis considering inconsistency
4.3 Crash Analysis

For the case study, an aggregated crash report provided by KRSA is used. The data included
details on identified road sections with their corresponding crash counts during the year 2014 to
2016. Crashes recorded on NH66 is filtered from the record and overlaid on the
inconsistencies established on the road. The distribution of crash data and its pattern in
relation with inconsistencies visually clustered is shown in Figure 6. From the crash analysis,
it could be observed that road stretches with frequent geometric inconsistencies are observed
to have a lesser number of crashes, which might be due to drivers being vigilant. On the
contrary, a large number of crashes are observed when geometric inconsistencies are
sparsely distributed. Sparsely distributed inconsistencies might be more dangerous than
closer geometric inconsistencies; however, such an inference requires further analysis.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Speed based road inconsistency has been widely employed in crash analysis. In case of
organic road networks with varying road attributes, manual assessment of inconsistency is
strenuous. Hence, there is a need to automate remote assessment of road inconsistency. This
study proposes a methodology to automate inconsistency assessment with the help of remote
estimation of road geometry. GIS platform is employed for remote estimation of road
geometry which is further used to compute the safe speed on the road. Crowd-sourced speed
from google map substitutes for operating speed. A road section with crowd-sourced speed
exceeding the safe speed is tagged inconsistent. This methodology was employed on NH66
and the inconsistencies on the road was clustered geographically. When crash on NH66 was
analyzed with inconsistency, the crash data and density of inconsistency displayed a peculiar
pattern. Closer inconsistent sections were observed to have less crashes when compared to
sparse inconsistent sections. This infers that clustering inconsistency was capable of
capturing road network attributes related to crash. Thus, a macroscopic representation of
inconsistency gives an insight on crash prone regions in road network which would further
help in better resource allocation and safety management.

This study presents an application of inconsistency measure in safety evaluation.

Admittedly, there are some issues that need to be further addressed. The study has not
considered the traffic nature on the road. In future, based on the road traffic flow nature,
the decision on requirement of overtaking sight distance and stopping sight distance needs
to be considered. Additionally, since the time of occurrence of crash is not observed, head
light sight distance is not addressed in the current study. Current study has employed
crowd-sourced data from google as a proxy for operating speed. However, crowd-source
data is inadequate in capturing the speed of all vehicle units. Therefore, as further
improvement, study mandates the use of speed prediction model employable at road
network scale.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors acknowledge Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) for providing the crash data
that were used for this study.

REFERENCES
Bíl, M., Andrášik, R., Sedoník, J., and Cícha, V. (2018). Roca–an arcgis toolbox for road
alignment identification and horizontal curve radii computation. PloS one,
13(12):e0208407.

Castro, M., Iglesias, L., Sánchez, J. A., and Ambrosio, L. (2011). Sight distance analysis
of highways using GIS tools. Transportation research part C: emerging technologies,
19(6):997– 1005.
Castro, M., Anta, J. A., Iglesias, L., and Sánchez, J. A. (2014). Gis-based system for sight
distance analysis of highways. Journal of computing in civil engineering,
28(3):04014005.
Castro, M. and De Santos-Berbel, C. (2015). Spatial analysis of geometric design consis-
tency and road sight distance. International Journal of Geographical Information
Science, 29(12):2061–2074.
Castro, M., Lopez-Cuervo, S., Paréns-González, M., and de Santos-Berbel, C. (2016).
Lidar- based roadway and roadside modelling for sight distance studies. Survey
Review, 48(350):309–315.
Fitzpatrick, K. (2000). Evaluation of design consistency methods for two-lane rural
highways: executive summary. Technical report, United States. Federal Highway
Administration.
Gargoum, S. A., El-Basyouny, K., and Sabbagh, J. (2018). Assessing stopping and passing
sight distance on highways using mobile lidar data. Journal of Computing in Civil
Engineering, 32(4):04018025.
Krammes, R. A., Brackett, R., Shafer, M., Ottesen, J., Anderson, I., Fink, K., Collins, K.,
Pendleton, O., Messer, C., et al. (1995). Horizontal alignment design consistency for
rural two-lane highways. Technical report, United States. Federal Highway
Administration.
McFadden, J. and Elefteriadou, L. (2000). Evaluating horizontal alignment design
consistency of two-lane rural highways: Development of new procedure. Transportation
Research Record, 1737(1):9–17.
Messer, C. J. (1980). Methodology for Evaluating Geometric Design Consistency.
Transportation Research Record, no. 757, Transportation Research Board, National
Research Council, Washington, D.C., pp. 7-14.
Lamm, R., Guenther, A. K., and Choueiri, E. M. (1995). Safety module for highway
geometric design. Transportation Research Record, 1512(9):7–15.
Llopis-Castelló, D., Bella, F., Camacho-Torregrosa, F. J., and García, A. (2018a).
Newconsis- tency model based on inertial operating speed profiles for road safety
evaluation. Journal of transportation engineering, Part A: Systems, 144(4):04018006.
Llopis-Castelló, D., Bella, F., Camacho-Torregrosa, F. J., and García, A. (2018b). Time-
based calibration of the inertial operating speed to enhance the assessment of the
geometric design consistency. Transportation Research Record,2672(38):223–232.
Polus, A. and Mattar-Habib, C. (2004). New consistency model for rural highways and
its relationship to safety. Journal of transportation engineering, 130(3):286–293.

Wu, K.-F., Donnell, E. T., Himes, S. C., and Sasidharan, L. (2013). Exploring the
association between traffic safety and geometric design consistency based on vehicle
speed metrics. Journal of transportation engineering, 139(7):738–748.
Zegeer, C., Stewart, R., Reinfurt, D., Council, F., Neuman, T., Hamilton, E., Miller, T.,
and Hunter, W. (1991). Cost-effective geometric improvements for safety upgrading of
horizontal curves.