Great success for the AIT traffic safety team including Anna Huditz, Peter Saleh and Paul Rosenkranz: The Mobility Observation Box, an AI-based system for recording and objectively assessing traffic infrastructure and conflict situations, has won the prestigious Excellence in Road Safety Award of the European Road Safety Charter (ERSC) of the European Commission in the category "Data" – Europe's most important prize for road safety. On Thursday, the AIT experts had the pleasure of receiving the award at a festive gala in Brussels. In addition, the team received the Jacques Barrot Prize, which was awarded during the event via a public vote and is dedicated to the former EU Commissioner for Transport of the same name.
After the Mobility Observation Box received the prestigious German DEKRA Award 2021 in the category "Safety in Traffic" and the Ö3 Traffic Award 2022 in the category "Idea of the Year", this is further confirmation for the AIT team of their successful research work in the service of safe and sustainable mobility.
Increased safety - especially for vulnerable road users
To promote sustainable mobility, it is particularly important to increase the road safety of vulnerable and non-motorized road users. If pedestrians, cyclists and scooter riders do not feel safe on their daily journeys, they will rarely choose sustainable forms of mobility. For this reason, it is necessary to make the infrastructure appealing and, above all, safe for these groups.
Here, a proactive approach is needed that starts with traffic conflicts or so-called near-accidents. Conflicts occur much more frequently than accidents and thus provide a much larger data base for evaluating potential danger spots. Conflict analysis is thus a proven means of increasing traffic safety.
Mobility Observation Box: traffic evaluation and targeted improvement measures
Against this background, the experts at AIT have developed the Mobility Observation Box: A compact box films traffic events with a camera without influencing them, after which the data is analyzed using AI. For the first time, it is now possible to measure the safety of traffic infrastructures according to objective criteria and thus make them comparable.
The data collected forms the basis for the development of a risk-based assessment procedure based on state-of-the-art technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This enables high-precision monitoring of all movements of the different groups of road users (pedestrians, cyclists, cars, trucks, scooters, etc.) in a given road section. The measurements are repeatable and do not disturb the traffic flow. Each road user is detected, classified and their line of movement is recorded.
The data thus obtained is used to derive key figures for traffic conflicts such as conflict severity or relative speeds, as well as to determine general traffic-related parameters such as traffic volumes, speeds, etc.
Data protection and data security have the highest priority: The Mobility Observation Box is officially approved and complies with the strictest legal requirements. The automated anonymization of all road users ensures the highest level of data protection, and no conclusions can be drawn about individual persons.
The better understanding of possible causes of accidents helps to improve safety measures without referring only to historical accident data. The aim of the survey with the Mobility Observation Box is to provide objective and comparable evaluations of the effects of various infrastructural and traffic engineering measures on the risk of accidents and injuries.
Many different applications
Anna Huditz, Head of Competence Unit Transportation Infrastructure Technologies at the AIT Center for Low-Emission Transport: "Safety in traffic depends to a large extent on the condition of the respective infrastructure. And safety can be measured – whether in urban areas, at railroad crossings or on freeway ramps. With the Mobility Observation Box, we are now providing transport infrastructure operators with a tool that can actually help prevent serious accidents - a crucial step on the road to Vision Zero."
Paul Rosenkranz, Research Engineer and instrumental in the development of the Mobility Observation Box, adds: "We are convinced that with the Mobility Observation Box we can make an essential contribution to increasing the road safety of all road users. The Mobility Observation Box is currently being used in the European projects AMIGOS and Augmented CCAM, among others. The fact that we have now received the Excellence in Road Safety Award in the 'Data' category is a great confirmation of our work.
About the European Road Safety Charter
The ERSC is a European Union initiative dedicated to promoting road safety in Europe since its inception in 2004. Its main goal is to reduce the number of road accidents and make Europe's roads safer. With more than 4,000 members, including public institutions, companies, educational institutions and NGOs, who commit to taking concrete action to improve road safety, the European Road Safety Charter is helping to make Europe's road network safer for all road users.
Related links
European Road Safety Charter (ERSC)