Evaluation of Variable Speed Limits in a risk-sensitive traffic management system

This paper discusses about the efficiency of Variable Speed Limits (VSL) as a traffic management countermeasure for preventing crash risk on motorways in a real-time framework. This study builds on the work presented in where a model is developed to identify traffic crash risk during the last time intervals and predict the risk in the coming time interval. If the crash risk is predicted, VSL is activated, aiming to clear or diminish the crash risk. Several VSL strategies are tested using micro-simulation and their cost-effective evaluation is analyzed.