Signal 1 : Data Science for Vision Zero

Traffic accidents in cities are a hindrance to safe transportation in cities. With the advent of urban science, cities are looking for new approaches to improve road safety. New York City Department of Transportation collaborated with DataKind and Microsoft as part of Vision Zero to create an exposure model that could predict the traffic volume in every street using machine learning.

NYC DOT had limited data about the traffic volumes on streets and the impact of street design on safety. Using the model they collected huge datasets using extrapolation that contain pertinent information like the traffic volume, crash rates, street width and other parameters to help them understand traffic conditions.

This will definitely help achieve Vision Zero as policies and standards can be updated to suit real world conditions .Furthermore the Department of Transportation can use their insights to improve planning, design and implementation of streets, signals, bike paths and other structures. For example adjusting street width according to traffic volume or retiming signals to ease congestion can have a big impact on public safety. Next steps include analysis of traffic conditions in other cities to build customized models to predict the shape of traffic.

Source : https://youtu.be/3eUTcdFVcKs