Factors influencing the probability of an incident at a junction: Results from an interactive driving simulator

Using data generated from a fixed-base interactive driving simulator, which was used to evaluate a driver decision aid, a model is built to predict the probability of an incident (i.e. an accident or a ‘near miss’) occurring as a result of a right-turn across left-hand traffic at an unsignalised junction. This can be considered to be the product of two separate probabilities, the first being the probability that the gap between a pair of vehicles in the traffic stream is accepted, and the second the probability that the time needed to cross the on-coming stream of traffic causes the time-to-collision with the nearest vehicle in this traffic stream to be less than a second. The model is developed from the results of experimental trials involving a sample of drivers, the majority of whom were aged 60 years or older, in order to demonstrate the effect of various parameters on these probabilities. The parameters considered include the size of the gap between successive vehicles, vehicle characteristics such as size, colour and velocity, driver characteristics such as age and sex, and both daytime and night-time conditions.