An application of ITS devices for powered two-wheelers safety analysis: The Rome case study

Researchers, practitioners and local administrators tend to pay poor attention to Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs), thus affecting safety levels. The poor availability of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) to increase PTWs safety is evidence of the underestimation of this mode's role, although ITS applications in this field are largely beneficial to increasing road safety. A specific ITS tool to collect PTWs accidents data, tested on 23 sites in Rome, is described. The objective was to have the tested sites ranked according to a series of safety indicators, which describe the road characteristics in the most comprehensive way. Such safety indicators were selected after a review of the scientific literature in this field, focusing on those which resulted the most consistent with the Rome urban environment. The methodology began with a survey of useful ITS to collect data and "feed" the indicators, the selection of the most appropriate ITS tool for the Rome case study, and the process to apply the PTWs' safety indicators within the selected ITS tool's environment, before the test phase. After the test, results stressed that the use of the ITS tool applied could largely improve accuracy in the safety analysis, as it allowed the merging of GIS and GPS-based data in one single processing environment and improvement in the quality of indicators by integrating the accident dynamic parameters, features of road geometry, and vehicle behaviour during the accident.