Watch the full on-demand webinar below.
Key insights from our recent webinar introducing VERALYTIX Pulse and the future of proactive road safety analysis
The traditional approach to road safety management has always been reactive—waiting for crashes to occur, analyzing the data, and then implementing solutions. But what if we could identify safety risks before crashes happen? What if we could compress years of analysis into just weeks while making our roads safer proactively?
This was the central theme of our recent webinar “Introducing VERALYTIX Pulse: Measure the Safety Pulse of Your Network”, where Ashutosh Arun, Senior Product Manager from Transoft Solutions, demonstrated how video analytics and traffic conflict analysis are revolutionizing the way we approach road safety management.
The Challenge with Traditional Safety Management
Our webinar polling revealed that many organizations either don’t conduct network-level safety management or rely primarily on crash-based analysis. While crash data provides valuable insights, this approach has significant limitations:
- Reactive nature: You must wait for crashes to occur before identifying problems
- Slow timeline: The entire process from analysis to evaluation can take years
- Post-pandemic disruption: COVID-19 has fundamentally changed traffic patterns, making historical crash data less reliable
- New mobility modes: E-scooters and other emerging transportation modes lack sufficient crash history for analysis
Understanding Traffic Conflicts: The Key to Proactive Safety
VERALYTIX Pulse is built on the foundation that traffic conflicts are the single best predictors of crash risk, sometimes even better than crash data itself. But what exactly are traffic conflicts?
Traffic conflicts occur when road users must take evasive action to avoid collisions. They represent the same sequence of events as crashes, but with different outcomes due to various factors like reaction time, road conditions, and vehicle capabilities. The relationship between conflicts and crashes follows a probabilistic model – like the famous “Swiss cheese” model where multiple factors must align for a conflict to become a crash.
This understanding allows VERALYTIX Pulse to:
- Identify unsafe behaviors before they result in crashes
- Provide visual evidence of safety issues through video clips
- Generate sufficient data for analysis in weeks rather than years
- Support proactive rather than reactive safety management
Network-Level Safety Management: The Next Evolution
One of the most significant innovations presented was the Network Summary Dashboard, which is a centralized view of safety performance across entire transportation networks using conflict-based star ratings. This feature addresses a critical gap identified in our polling: many organizations struggle with network-level safety management.
The system provides:
Conflict-Based Star Ratings
Sites are rated from 1-5 stars based on conflict rates per thousand road users, allowing instant identification of high-risk locations that require immediate attention.
Advanced Benchmarking
- Local benchmarking: Compare sites within your network
- Global benchmarking: Leverage Transoft’s international project experience across 27+ countries
- Customizable filtering: Focus on specific safety concerns like pedestrian safety
Crash Prediction Integration
Convert conflict data into expected annual crash frequencies by type and severity, making safety comparisons more tangible and actionable.
Comprehensive Site-Level Analysis
Beyond network management, VERALYTIX Pulse offers detailed site-specific analysis through multiple visualization tools, including:
- Conflict Heat Maps: Instantly identify spatial patterns of unsafe behaviors
- Video Evidence: Watch actual conflict situations unfold to understand root causes
- Speed Analysis: Examine speed distributions by road user type and time period
- Customizable Detection Zones: Study specific behaviors like stop sign violations or intersection blocking
Conflict heatmaps help identify high-risk areas where road users most frequently come into conflict
Real-World Applications and Versatility
The platform’s flexibility was demonstrated through various study types:
- Site-specific safety assessments using pre-recorded video
- Before-and-after evaluation of safety countermeasures
- Pedestrian and cyclist safety analysis
- Custom behavioral studies (queue blocking the intersection, violation analysis)
- Speed compliance monitoring
The system works with standard HD cameras (minimum 15 fps) and can accommodate various lighting conditions through HDR cameras, infrared cameras, and even thermal imaging for challenging environments.
Looking Forward: From Reactive to Proactive
The webinar demonstrated a fundamental shift in how we can approach road safety. Rather than waiting years for crash data to accumulate, transportation professionals can now leverage video analytics solutions like VERALYTIX Pulse to:
- Screen networks proactively using conflict-based analysis
- Identify contributing factors through visual evidence and heat mapping
- Select countermeasures using integrated expert systems
- Evaluate effectiveness within weeks rather than years
- Manage safety continuously rather than episodically
Key Takeaways
- Video analytics combined with traffic conflict analysis provides unprecedented insight into road safety risks
- Network-level safety management becomes feasible with automated screening and benchmarking tools
- Proactive safety management can reduce both timeline and costs while preventing crashes rather than reacting to them
- Visual evidence helps transportation professionals understand and communicate safety issues more effectively
- Standardized metrics enable meaningful comparisons across different sites and networks
What’s Next?
The response from webinar attendees was encouraging, with many expressing interest in exploring video analytics projects. For those ready to move from reactive to proactive safety management, VERALYTIX Pulse sents a significant step forward in making our transportation networks safer for everyone.
Interested in learning more about how video analytics can transform your safety management approach?
Learn more about the product here and contact our team here to explore how VERALYTIX Pulse can fit into your safety management workflow.