(DMR) Near Miss Collision Analytics Data Project

Transportation agencies rely on data to make informed decisions on mitigation strategies to prevent collisions.

Typically crash data has been the data that has been relied upon to enact these strategies. Unfortunately, relying on crash data means accidents have already happened. Transportation agencies are now taking a proactive approach to prevent accidents in areas that are a high priority based on near miss data. Near miss data is not as prevalent as crash data and is typically expensive to get. There is also questions within the industry if certain types of near misses (ex. hard braking incidents) correlate with eventual crashes. There is also not consensus as to what a “near-miss” is.

Transportation agencies need a way to query traffic data and set their own parameters for near-miss collisions. They also need to be able to correlate information with historical crash data.