Prediction of Near-Crashes from Observed Vehicle Kinematics using Machine Learning

This study introduces a machine learning model for near-crash prediction from observed vehicle kinematics data. The main hypothesis is that vehicles tend to experience discernible turbulence in their kinematics shortly before involvement in near-crashes. To test this hypothesis, the SHRP2 NDS vehicle kinematics data (speed, longitudinal acceleration, lateral acceleration, yaw rate, and pedal position) are utilized. Several machine learning algorithms are trained and comparatively analyzed including K nearest neighbor (KNN), random forest, support vector machine (SVM), decision trees, Gaussian naïve Bayes (Gaussian NB), and adaptive boost (AdaBoost). Sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the optimal prediction horizon length (the time period before the occurrence of a near-crash) and the turbulence horizon length (the time period during which near-crash related changes in vehicle kinematics take place). The results indicate that optimal prediction performance can be achieved at a 1 s prediction horizons and a 3 s turbulence horizon. At these values, the AdaBoost model outperforms all other models in relation to its recall (100%), precision (98%), and F1-score (99%). These values imply that the near-crash prediction model is highly efficient in predicting most instances of near-crashes with minimal false near-crash predictions. This promising prediction performance offers a viable tool for supporting crash avoidance systems in the emerging connected/autonomous vehicle technology.