Image-based Identification and GIS-integration of Vehicle Restraint Systems and Evaluation of Safety Effects

collisions between vehicles leaving the road and unforgiving roadside objects such as trees, poles, road signs, etc. constitute a major road safety issue.On the Austrian road network, approximately 7.500 injury crashes occur every year due to run-off-road (rOr) manoeuvres (i.e.20% of all injury crashes on public roads), contributing 35% to fatalities and 25% to serious injuries.Vehicle restraint systems (VrS) such as guardrails, concrete barriers, terminals or crash attenuators play a decisive role in mitigating the consequences of rOr crashes.unfortunately, most national road administrations (NrA) do not have a centralized data management, while geo-referenced information on VrS and their safety-related attributes are also not available as digitized data.researchers from the AIT have developed a novel approach to investigate, classify and evaluate VrS by means of image data processing, towards providing a comprehensive VrS inventory.The information obtained can be used for benefit-cost-analyses, road safety inspections and the evaluation of the effectiveness of different vehicle restraint systems.