Near miss pilot scheme to identify road safety hotspots

A new collaboration to improve road safety has been launch by Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) and transport technology company VivaCity.

This collaboration will mark the first UK Road Safety project of its kind. 32 existing sensors across local West Midlands authorities will be upgraded to include the Near Miss feature. 

The Near Miss feature combines object speed and path data to understand interactions between two road users in order to estimate the likelihood of a collision.

VivaCity expects this innovative layer on road safety data will help local authorities, like TfWM, identify and diagnose dangerous sites and hotspots on the road network.

The project has two phases; the first is to monitor insights from VivaCity’s Near Miss data  over 6-12 months. The second phase includes using these insights to determine future locations that would benefit from the upgraded sensors. The overall aim of this project is to better diagnose the root cause of collisions, provide insights as to why these are occurring and recommend potential solutions to help prevent them in the future.

VivaCity and TfWM, which is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), have a long history of collaboration, notably a traffic monitoring project with WM5G and Air Quality monitoring (with Vaisala) that innovated road traffic networks and reduced congestion in the area.

This project will focus specifically on the Near Miss implementation and how the new technology will work towards enhancing road safety. Analysing trends within the collected data, will add prevention of future incidents in common accident hotspots and support TfWM’s Road Safety Strategy.

Andy Street, Mayor of West Midlands and chair of the WMCA, said: “Our existing partnership is going a long way in future-proofing our road networks, however, with the added benefits of Near Miss technology, local authorities will be empowered to help prevent future road collisions by being aware of issues before the worst happens. Our shared mission is to innovate road traffic networks to make improvements for local people across the board. Road safety is of paramount importance so it is great to be working with VivaCity to help make this a reality.”

Adam Tranter, the Mayor’s Cycling & Walking Commissioner, said: “Road safety is a top priority and we need to use all the tools at our disposal if we are to reach Vision Zero. VivaCity’s Near Miss technology highlights issues which usually fly under the radar but that may need further investigation and improvement. The Near Miss technology is focused on protecting vulnerable road users, pedestrians and cyclists, from harm and I’m grateful to VivaCity for their continued collaboration on our shared mission to make our roads safer.”

Mark Nicholson, CEO and co-founder at VivaCity added: “The upgrade of our existing sensors to include Near Miss will aid in our goal of diagnosing the root causes of dangerous road users interactions over the coming months. We aim to use the collated data to improve road safety throughout the West Midlands, and in turn, identify more hotspots that could be vital to reducing traffic incidents. This partnership is a positive step in improving road safety in the UK.”