A Review of Crash Surrogate Events

Abstract

With the enormous losses to society resulting from motor-vehicle crashes, traffic safety has become an increasing concern of transport agencies. The surrogate events, which are defined as measures of accident proximity, are recognised as an alternative instead of the accumulation of crashes in safety evaluation, by taking advantage of many merits. This paper briefly assesses the range of available events by analysing their strengths and weaknesses. By using an illustrative case study, the applicability and reliability of various surrogate events under different situations are discussed. While the introduction of surrogate events could potentially improve our understanding of the affecting factors for motor-vehicle crashes, it is the prospect of combining evolving methodologies with far more detailed vehicle crash data that holds the greatest promise for the future.