Paul St-Aubin edited Introcution.tex  almost 10 years ago

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\section{Introduction}  Roundabouts are relatively new designs for intersecitons intersections  in North America with considerable promises in terms of safety, as well as capacity. However, questions still remain regarding the feasibility of introducing the roundabout to regions were driving culture is not habituated to driving around them. This is a crucial aspect for the implementation of roundabouts as traffic conflicts are managed entirely by person-to-person interactions instead of traffic-light controllers and resistance to adoption in some areas is still high.  And while a number of studies cite reductions in accidents rates, they do not provide microscopic details about the inner mechanics of driving behaviour that surrogate safety analysis provides which might be key to adapting roundabout designs for different driving cultures.  The objectives of this paper are to explore the impact of roundabout characteristics, their geometry and environment, on driver behaviour and safety through video-based microscopic data analysis. This represents one of the largest applications of surrogate safety analysis to date.