Integration of driving simulator and traffic simulation to analyse behaviour at railway crossings

The use of state-of-the-art technology to collect and analyse data has significantly improved the effectiveness of safety studies. Currently, despite the fact that there are many safety systems deployed at railway crossings, only limited research has been conducted to evaluate which of these systems is the most effective in terms of costs and safety. This paper demonstrates a way to evaluate safety at railway crossings using a twin-pronged approach: a driving simulator and traffic simulation software. A number of outputs have been observed from a driving simulator, such as driver compliance rate, vehicle speed profile, acceleration profile, initial braking position and final braking position. The compliance percentage at passive crossings (67 and 72% for a stop sign and rumble strips, respectively) has lower compliance rates compared with active crossings (97 and 93% for flashing red light and in-vehicle audible warning, respectively) at an 80 km/h approach speed. Using a statistical analysis it is shown that speed and acceleration profiles can be used to differentiate the effectiveness of active and passive crossings. These indicators are interpreted and used as input to a traffic simulation, which assists in determining which safety device is more efficient. By integrating driving simulator and traffic simulation models, this approach can be applied to evaluate and compare safety performance without the need to install costly test beds at real railway crossings.