Correlating Connected Vehicle Estimated Deceleration Events with Crash Incidents near Interstate Interchanges

Historical roadway safety analyses have used labor and time-intensive crash data collection procedures. However, crash reporting is often delayed and crash locations are reported with varying levels of spatial accuracy and detail. Recent advances in connected vehicle (CV) data provide an opportunity for stakeholders to proactively identify areas of safety concerns in near-real time with high spatial precision. Public and private sector stakeholders including automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and insurance providers may independently define acceleration thresholds for reporting unsafe driver behavior. Although some OEMs have provided fixed threshold hard-braking event data for a number of years, this varies by OEM and there is no published literature on the best thresholds to use for identifying emerging safety issues. This research proposes a methodology to estimate deceleration events from raw CV trajectory data at varying thresholds that can be scaled to any CV. The estimated deceleration events and crash incident records around 629 interstate exits in Indiana were analyzed for a three-month period from March 1-May 31, 2023. Nearly 20 million estimated deceleration events and 4800 crash records were spatially joined to a 2-mile search radius around each exit ramp. Results showed that deceleration events between -0.5 g and -0.4 g had the highest correlation with an R2 of 0.69. This study also identifies the top 20 interstate exit locations with highest deceleration events. The framework presented in this study enables agencies and transportation professionals to perform safety evaluations on raw trajectory data without the need to integrate external data sources.