• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.145-155
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• 2012

PURPOSES: This study proposes a novel method based on microscopic simulation models to evaluate bicycle passing ways in mixed traffic flow conditions at signalized intersections. METHODS: Both operational efficiency and safety are taken into consideration in the evaluation. A widely used performance measure, delay, is used for evaluating the operational efficiency. Regarding the safety evaluation, surrogate safety measures (SSM) to represent traffic conflicts and the level of crash severity, DeltaS and Max.DeltaV, are applied in the proposed method. RESULTS: Extensive simulations and statistical tests show that an integrated bike-box way is identified as the best in terms of operational efficiency and safety. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method and outcomes of this study will be valuable for bicycle traffic operations and facility design.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.59-70
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• 2009

This study presents a novel traffic information system which is capable of detecting unsafe traffic events leading to accident occurrence and providing warning information to drivers for safer driving. Unsafe traffic events are captured by a vehicle image processing-based detection system in real time. Surrogate safety measures (SSM) representing quantitative accident potentials were derived, and further utilized to develop a data processing algorithm and analysis techniques in the proposed system. This study also defined 'emergency warning area' and 'general warning area' for more effective provision of warning information. In addition, methodologies for determining thresholds to trigger warning information were presented. Technical issues and further studies to fully exploit the benefits of the proposed system were discussed. It is expected that the proposed system would be effective for better management of traffic flow to prevent traffic accidents on freeways.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.323-336
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• 2015

Estimating the risks on the roadway using surrogate safety measures (SSM) has an advantage in that it focuses on the vehicle trajectory directly involved in conflicts. On the other hand, there is a restriction on estimating the risks of continuous segments due to the limited data collected from a location. To overcome the restriction, this study presents the scheme of acquiring the vehicular trajectory using real time kinematics-differential global positioning system (RTK-DGPS) and develops a methodology which contains the considerations of the problems to calculate the SSM such as time-to-collision (TTC), deceleration rate to avoid collision (DRAC) and acceleration noise (AN). By using the methodology, this study shows a result from an experiment executed in a section where the variation of vehicular movement can be observed from several continuous flow roadway sections near Seoul and Gyeonggi Province in Korea. The result illustrated the risks on the roadway by the SSM metrics in certain situations like merging and diverging, stop-and-go, and weaving. This study would be applied to relate the dangers with characteristics of drivers and roadway sections, and prevenst accidents or conflicts by detecting dangerous roadway sections and drivers' behaviors. This study contributes to improving roadway safety and reducing car-accidents.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.21-32
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• 2012

Exclusive bus lane (EBL) is typically located in the roadway median, and is accessed by weaving across the GPLs(general purpose lanes) before entering from the left lane of the GPLs. To maximize the potential for successful EBL operations, a critical design issue that requires special attention is the length of bus weaving section before entering EBL. The process of developing guidelines for the length of bus weaving section can be supported by a sensitivity analysis of performance measure (safety) with respect to the bus weaving distance. However, field data are difficult to obtain due to inherent complexity in creating performance measure (safety) samples under various interesting flows and bus weaving distance that are keys to research success. In this paper, VISSIM simulation is applied to simulate the operation of roadway weaving areas with EBL, and based on vehicle trajectory data from microscopic traffic simulation models, the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM) computes the number of surrogate conflicts (or degree of safety) with respect to the bus weaving distance. Then, a multiple linear regression (MLR) model using safety data (number of surrogate conflicts) is developed. Finally, guidelines for bus weaving distance are established based on the developed MLR. Developed guidelines explicitly indicate that a longer bus weaving distance is required to maintain desired safety as weaving volume increases.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.42-60
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• 2024

This study analyzed the characteristics of mixed traffic flows with autonomous vehicles on highway weaving sections and assessed the safety of vehicle-following pairs based on surrogate safety indicators. The intelligent driver model (IDM) was utilized to emulate the driving behavior of autonomous vehicles, and the weaving sections were divided into lengths of 300 and 600 meters for analysis within a micro-traffic simulation (VISSIM). Although significant differences were found in the average speed, density, and headway between the two sections through t-test results, no significant differences were observed when comparing the number of conflicts per indicator and the vehicle-following pair. Four safety indicators were selected for the mixed traffic evaluation based on their ability to represent risk levels similar to those perceived by drivers. The safety analysis, based on the selected four indicators, determined that autonomous vehicles following other autonomous vehicles were the safest pairing. Future research should focus on integrating these indicators into a single comprehensive index for analysis.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.68-80
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• 2016

Interest in freeway truck traffic has increased largely due to greater safety concerns regarding truck-related crashes. The negative interactions between slow-moving trucks and other vehicles are a primary cause of hazardous conditions, which lead to crashes with larger speed variations. To improve operational efficiency and safety, providing a climbing lane that separates slow-moving trucks from higher performance vehicles is frequently considered when upgrading geometrics. This study developed an operations strategy for freeway climbing lanes based on traffic conditions in real time. To consider traffic safety when designing a dynamic strategy to determine whether a climbing lane is closed or open, various factors, including the level of service (LOS) and the percentage of trucks, are investigated through microscopic simulations. A microscopic traffic simulator, VISSIM, was used to simulate freeway traffic streams and collect vehicle-maneuvering data. Additionally, an external application program interface, VISSIM's COM-interface, was used to implement the proposed climbing lane operations strategies. Surrogate safety measures (SSM), including the frequency of rear-end conflicts and, were used to quantitatively evaluate the traffic safety using an analysis of individual vehicle trajectories obtained from VISSIM simulations with various operations scenarios. It is expected that the proposed algorithm can be the backbone for operating the climbing lane in real time for safer traffic management.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.18-34
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• 2021

Pedestrian deaths in Korea due to traffic accidents are 40 percent of the fatalities in traffic accidents, which is about twice the average of OECD member countries. To reduce severe pedestrian accidents, it is necessary to apply the accident reduction measures to high-risk drivers (novice, elderly, and commercial vehicle drivers) who are more likely to cause traffic accidents than general drivers. Therefore, this study analyzed the effect of safe driving education on high-risk drivers' behavior. Here, the safe driving education is chosen as the measure to reduce traffic accidents. As part of the study, sudden pedestrian crossing situations were implemented in the driving simulator, and the vehicle trajectory data were collected to compare the driving behavior before and after the education. Most surrogate safety measures showed no improvement in the driving behavior of novice and elderly drivers, and the effect of safe driving education was found to be significant only in the group of commercial vehicle drivers. The results implied that additional measures such as pedestrian safety infrastructure and driver assistance systems, apart from the safe driving education, may be needed for novice and elderly drivers to reduce pedestrian accidents caused by them. With the findings mentioned above, this study is expected to provide a foundation to establish a plan to reduce pedestrian accidents caused by high-risk drivers.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.73-82
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• 2011

Recent advancement in traffic surveillance systems has allowed the researchers to obtain more detailed vehicular movement such as individual vehicle trajectory data. Understanding the characteristics of interactions between leading and following vehicles in the traffic flow stream is a backbone for designing and evaluating more sophisticated traffic and vehicle control strategies. This study proposes a methodology for estimating rear-end crash potential, as a probabilistic measure, in real-time based on the analysis of vehicular movements. The methodology presented in this study consists of three components. The first predicts vehicle position and speed every second using a Kalman filtering technique. The second estimates the probability for the vehicle's trajectory to belong to either 'changing lane' or 'going straight'. A binary logistic regression (BLR) is used to model the lane-changing decision of the subject vehicle. The other component calculates crash probability by employing an exponential decay function that uses time-to-collision (TTC) between the subject vehicle and the front vehicle. The result of this study is expected to be adapted in developing traffic control and information systems, in particular, for crash prevention.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.116-128
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• 2017

Traffic accidents can be defined as a physical collision event of vehicles occurred instantaneously when drivers do not perceive the surrounding vehicles and roadway environments properly. Therefore, detecting the high potential events that cause traffic accidents with monitoring the interactions among the surroundings continuously by driver is the prerequisite for prevention the traffic accidents. For the analysis, basic data were collected to analyze interactions using a test vehicle which is equipped the GPS(Global Positioning System)-IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit), camera, radar and RiDAR. From the collected data, highway geometric information and the surrounding traffic situation were analyzed and then safety evaluation algorithm for driving vehicle was developed. In order to detect a dangerous event of interaction with surrounding vehicles, locations and speed data of surrounding vehicles acquired from the radar sensor were used. Using the collected data, the tangent and curve section were divided and the driving safety evaluation algorithm which is considered the highway geometric characteristic were developed. This study also proposed an algorithm that can assess the possibility of collision against surrounding vehicles considering the characteristics of geometric road structure. The methodology proposed in this study is expected to be utilized in the fields of autonomous vehicles in the future since this methodology can assess the driving safety using collectible data from vehicle's sensors.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.39.1-39.18
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• 2021

The high virulent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus that emerged in China at the end of 2019 has generated novel coronavirus disease, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), causing a pandemic worldwide. Every country has made great efforts to struggle against SARS-CoV-2 infection, including massive vaccination, immunological patients' surveillance, and the utilization of convalescence plasma for COVID-19 therapy. These efforts are associated with the attempts to increase the titers of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing Abs (nAbs) generated either after infection or vaccination that represent the body's immune status. As there is no standard therapy for COVID-19 yet, virus eradication will mainly depend on these nAbs contents in the body. Therefore, serological nAbs neutralization assays become a requirement for researchers and clinicians to measure nAbs titers. Different platforms have been developed to evaluate nAbs titers utilizing various epitopes sources, including neutralization assays based on the live virus, pseudovirus, and neutralization assays utilizing recombinant SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein receptor binding site, receptor-binding domain. As a standard neutralization assay, the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) requires isolation and propagation of live pathogenic SARS-CoV-2 virus conducted in a BSL-3 containment. Hence, other surrogate neutralization assays relevant to the PRNT play important alternatives that offer better safety besides facilitating high throughput analyses. This review discusses the current neutralization assay platforms used to evaluate nAbs, their techniques, advantages, and limitations.