The Effect of Traffic Flow and Vehicle Speeds as a Determinant of Road Risk

Strategic roads are vital to the economic success of Britain and the economy suffers when this network is compromised by traffic jams and collisions. Despite the availability of minute-by-minute data for vehicle speeds on the UK's strategic roads, there has been little analysis of the associated risks arising from changes in traffic flow and vehicle speeds. This project would aim to analyse this data and aggregate it with a wider array of related datasets (collisions, precipitation, light conditions, temperature etc.) to create a risk profile that could be used to influence setting of variable speed limits, enforcement of vehicle speeds, driver messaging through overhead gantries and wider programmes of driver education. The reduction in risk and casualties along with improvements in flow could have a significant economic benefit