Development of Event Data Recorder for Pedestrians for analysis of traffic accidents

The number of traffic accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians is increasing rapidly in Japan. To clarify the causes of these accidents, it is indispensable to gather information as to what happened in these accidents. This paper introduces the prototype of an Event Data REcorder for a Pedestrian (EDREP) for recording and analyzing traffic accidents similar to the Event Data Recorder (EDR) of a vehicle. The prototype of the EDREP consists of a sensor unit and a controller unit. The sensor unit consists of image sensors, a motion sensor, and a Global Positioning System (GPS) data receiver. The controller unit consists of a personal computer. The sensor unit and the controller unit are connected through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) link. The video image sequences acquired by the EDREP are transferred to a data server through a wireless internet connection in real time using video streaming technology. In this paper, three video camera systems (Type I, II, III) are implemented and assessed. The main difference among the systems is the type of cameras used in the sensor unit. Type I, II and III are equipped with two or more Web cameras, an omni-directional video camera and two or more NTSC video cameras, respectively. This paper also describes the advantages and disadvantages of the three systems based on results obtained by conducting experiments in a real-road environment.