Application of pneumatic tubes to evaluate driver behavior and interventions at low traffic railway level crossings

摘要

The recent development of new technologies has attracted the interest of the rail industry as a way to increase driver awareness at railway level crossings by providing new ways to display information to drivers as they approach crossings. While such ideas have been predominantly trialed in driving simulators, there is a growing interest for live trials of such interventions on the road. While most studies have demonstrated that errors or violations on the part of the road user are the largest contributor to level crossing crashes, the understanding of driver behavior at level crossings is poorly understood due to the limited number, focus and period of time of studies conducted at level crossings. This highlights the lack of manageable methods for studying driver behavior at level crossings on a long term basis in naturalistic conditions, particularly for passive level crossings, which are often located in remote areas. We propose a new, practical and affordable application of pneumatic tubes to evaluate over the long term both the compliance of drivers at level crossings and their speed during the approach of level crossing with low road traffic volume. We tested our methodology at two railway level crossings in the Brisbane region and recorded over 10,000 vehicle movements for each site during a 5 months observation.