Roadway incidents remain a constant concern for transportation agencies as they manage post-pileup congestion and work towards reducing fatal accident rates.
To achieve this, cities must consider how to adapt their infrastructure to create a safer environment for all road users.
Vision Zero & MetroLab:
INRIX maintains a long-term partnership with the Vision Zero Network (VZN), a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries. As part of this collaboration, INRIX releases a Speed Safety Scorecard, offering critical insights into where road safety improvements are most needed.
To support further research into traffic safety, INRIX provides no-cost data to universities associated with the MetroLab Network. Nine programs were awarded data and three of the universities focused their initiatives on safety:
- University of New Mexico: Studied the impact of freight crashes and the contributing infrastructural risk factors.
- University of Michigan: Investigated how traffic incidents affect flow
- University of California, Berkeley: Evaluated the effectiveness of speed safety camera
Las Vegas & Beyond; Practical Applications:
In 2019, Las Vegas experienced a troubling spike in traffic incidents, averaging 1 fatal and 3.5 serious injuries per week on the city’s roadways. Focused on reducing the number of lethal accidents in the city, Las Vegas launched a Vision Zero initiative in 2022.
To help facilitate this, Las Vegas started integrating INRIX Safety Analytics. Las Vegas integrated geographic information systems (GIS) to create a safety dashboard for the city’s roadways. This allows the city to find where potential improvements to safety, like reduced speed limits, could be made. One key finding was that 77% of fatal injuries occurred on just 11% of roadways.
The timeliness and size of INRIX data is a major asset to Las Vegas. Using real-time data, the city can directly analyze the effects of changes to the city’s infrastructure and what it means for traffic safety. Historical data similarly allows for before and after comparisons and quick preliminary analysis of citizens’ requests for changes to the city’s infrastructure.
In other cities such as Los Angeles and Boca Raton, Safety Analytics is essential for their safety initiatives. INRIX data helps Los Angeles find locations for automated speed enforcement systems and speed humps. Boca Raton uses data to analyze speeding in school zones and prioritize speed management systems in the most affected areas. By using time-specific datasets for school hours, the city can easily analyze which school zones to tackle first.
INRIX Compass: The AI Advantage
Generative AI presents an extraordinary opportunity for data analysis. To continue innovating, INRIX has developed its first AI-based product: INRIX Compass. Already integrated into Safety View and Mission Control and with plans to be integrated across the INRIX product suite, Compass combines a 50-petabyte data lake with the analytical power of generative AI to create a market-leading analysis solution.
Using plain language instructions, users have control over the system and may easily tailor their analysis to specific circumstances. INRIX Compass also includes image generation tools to visualize proposed infrastructure improvements. This streamlines the safety screening process even further, allowing the deployment of safe infrastructure improvements quicker than ever before.
Building Safer Roads, One Insight at a Time
As cities strive to reduce traffic fatalities and improve mobility for all, data-driven solutions from INRIX are proving essential. From empowering research to enabling real-time decision-making in cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, INRIX is helping agencies move from reactive responses to proactive safety strategies. Learn more about INRIX Safety Analytics, INRIX Compass, or watch the webinar: The Future of Road Safety is Here.