title: A method for determining the number of traffic conflict points between vehicles at major-minor highway intersections.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Traffic conflict points are the areas formed by conflict movements in the traffic flow. The numbers and distributions of different types of traffic conflict points are often used to evaluate access management designs and the safety performance of intersections. Customarily, determining the number of different types of traffic conflict points is based on the manual drawing method, which is troublesome and makes using computerized procedures for calculation of the number of traffic conflict points difficult.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The present work aims to quickly compute the number of traffic conflict points between vehicles at major-minor highway intersections.
  
  
  METHODS
  The concept of "virtual lanes" is defined, and the virtual lane conversion method is proposed. Based on actual and virtual lanes, vehicular movements, and traffic control modes, a generalized method to determine the number of traffic conflict points between vehicles at major-minor highway intersections is developed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A procedure for determining the number of conflict points is presented. A similar HCM LOS-style form and computer software were designed to help calculate the number of conflict points.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Applications show that the method can efficiently and accurately determine the number of traffic conflict points between vehicles at major-minor highway intersections.
authors.affiliation: School of Automobile and Traffic, Qingdao Technological University, Qingdao, Shandong 266520, P. R. China. panfuquan@gmail.com
authors.forename: Fuquan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Lixia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Jiguang James
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Fengyuan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004779:Environment Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results