Intelligent Surveillance System Based on Stereo Vision for Level Crossings Safety Applications

Abstract

Considered as a weak point in road and railway infrastructure, level crossings (LC) improvement safety became an important field of academic research and took increasingly railways undertakings concerns. Improving safety of persons and road-rail facilities is an essential key element to ensure a good operating of the road and railway transport. Statistically, nearly 44% of level crossings users have a bad perception of the environment which consequently increases the accidents risks Nelson (2002). However, the behavior of pedestrians, road vehicle drivers and railway operators cannot be previously estimated beforehand. According to Griffioen (2004), the human errors are the causes of 99% of accidents at LC whose 93% are caused by road users. It is important also to note the high cost related to each accident, approximately one hundredmillion euro per year in the EU for all level crossing accidents. For this purpose, road and railway safety professionals from several countries have been focused on providing a level crossings as safer as possible. Actions are planned in order to exchange information and provide experiments for improving the management of level crossing safety and performance. This has enabled us to discuss sharing knowledge gained from research into improving safety at level crossings.