An overview of the concept of near-crash events and its application in traffic safety analysis

Crash data analysis has always been considered as the main approach to analyze and evaluate the safety performance of traffic facilities. However, crash dataare always insufficient statistical analysis of traffic safety. In addition, using crash data in safety analysis is a reactive approach. On the other hand, proactive analysis has become one of the main concerns of researchers in the field of traffic safety. Applying surrogate measures and events instead of crash data, is one of the proactive approaches in evaluation of traffic safety, which has been started from four decades ago and experienced an increasing growth in the recent years. The development of image processing technologies, digital sensors and traffic simulation software in the recent decade have influenced the promotion of this field. The concept of near-crash events, surrogate measures and the progress of this concept in the traffic safety studies is investigated in the current study. This study can be regarded as a beginning step for a more serious application of this approach in the traffic safety analysis in Iran