Transportation Research Projects

  • Transportation Research Projects

    • Testbed Initiative: Alternative Transportation Safety Systems  

    The goal of the testbed initiative project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Mobileye Shield collision avoidance system in an effort to reduce conflicts between transit buses and pedestrians/bicycles.  

    UFTI-T2 partnered with the City of Gainesville and Regional Transit System to install Mobileye devices on transit buses operating within Gainesville. The device uses state of the art technology to detect pedestrian and bicyclist conflicts and dangerous situations such as lane departures and forward collision warning. The device features operator notification of pedestrian detection, dangerous situations requiring automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane centering, and traffic jam assist to assist bus drivers in decision-making.  

    The three primary objectives of the Testbed Initiative project are:  

    • Identify and characterize behavioral and infrastructure conditions that lead to incidents or near incidents between transit vehicles and pedestrians/bicyclists. The current practice in most safety efforts is reactive in nature. This project is an effort to develop a proactive approach to quantify potential risk between transit and non-motorists. The proposed methodology will leverage emerging technologies in order to better quantify risk and potentially identify mitigation strategies. In the absence of technology, there is no meaningful way to comprehensively catalogue practical safety drift and near incidents.   
    • Characterize Perceived Acceptance and Helpfulness to transit drivers. The acceptance of these ADAS systems is a key component to the overall effectiveness of the system. The ultimate goal is to make drivers more aware of potential conflicts with pedestrians and bicycles. The opinions of the drivers using these systems on a day-to-day basis will provide valuable insight into which components are helpful or may become a hindrance. 
    • Develop framework to prioritize ADAS investments for small- and mid-sized transit agencies. Thereare a host of financial and public perception reasons why agencies should procure ADAS. The systems, though, are costly and encompass an array of technologies. While most systems include multiple features, there is a degree of scalability. Given budget constraints and the fact that drivers are likely to use ADAS features at varying frequencies, agencies must prioritize those features, which offer the most benefit and have the greatest potential for use, i.e., are the most cost-effective to obtain. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/green-people-walking-pedestrian-crossing-gm1003610782-271132468  
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Clark Letter  

    Transportation Safety Center 

    UF collaborates with stakeholders to develop safety plans focused on locally maintained roadways using a crash tree tool to conduct traditional hot spot analysis to identify high crash and crash risk locations Developed crash tree tool to for benefit / cost analysis.