Improving safety around Danish schools
Project highlights:
Minimizing
collision risks
Detailed
analysis
Thanks to DFS TrafficSurvey, COWI was able to track all the road users (mainly pedestrians, cyclists and car drivers) and analyze their trajectories individually.
Situation
Viborg municipality in Denmark is responsible for all the primary and secondary schools in its area. As road safety is crucial in the schools’ surroundings, the municipality wanted to pinpoint all the problematic areas. The main goal was to understand if the current design was safe for both cyclists and pedestrians coming to and back from school, as well as to get deeper insight into drivers’ behavior (parking habits, use of zebra crossings, etc.).
All of these data should serve as a basis for new safety measures that will be used during upcoming design adjustments.
About the customer
Use-case: Safety analysis
Vertical: Municipality
Location: Scandinavia
Products: TrafficSurvey
About Viborg municipality
Located on Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark, the municipality consists of 45 towns, with Viborg town being the capital. With the number of inhabitants of around 100 000, Viborg municipality accounts for one of the larger Danish municipalities.
Conducting the analysis
Instead of using old-fashioned manual counting, COWI decided to utilize modern approach, recording each of the areas with a drone capable of capturing the whole situation from a single spot. Usually, the recording was done 20 minutes before 8 AM, when most of the lessons start in Denmark, to capture the heaviest traffic in the areas.
Afterwards, COWI used DFS TrafficSurvey online platform to get the desired insights. This way, it was possible to track down the movements of cars, bikes and pedestrians and investigate the crossings of their trajectories. Furthermore, they received an insight into the traffic counts and people’s preferences of roads and parking lots.
Results
Several problematic areas were pinpointed around the schools, making the responsible people aware of the potential risks. In many cases, new measures were undertaken to redirect the traffic and minimize the risk of collisions and make the journey to the schools safer for everyone.safer for everyone.