O uso da microssimulação na avaliação do desempenho da segurança viária

Abstract

This paper presents a systemized discussion on the different aspects that characterize the potential use of microscopic simu-lation in traffic safety studies. Initially, it is presented a literature review on the existing traffic safety performance measures, analyzing their conceptual evolution and the appropriateness of using microscopic simulation models in their estimation. Following, there is a de-scription of the main characteristics of traffic simulators to be observed when applied to safety studies. There is also a discussion on the aspects related to calibrating and validating microscopic modeling algorithms for this type of application, as well as the need to vali-date the relationship between simulated measures and imminent accident situations observed on the field. At last, it is concluded that there are many research opportunities and challenges in this area, including new means of representing traffic conflicts/interactions, simplifications inherent to microscopic modeling algorithms, procedures for calibrating and validating these algorithms, as well as the relative validity of the performance measures to reflect the real context of road safety.