Visual-based Road Accidents with Dashboard ...

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Visual-based Road Accidents with Dashboard Camera Traffic Monitoring System Boonsap Witchyangkoon a

a*

, and Sayan Sirimontree

a

Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Thammasat University, Pathumtani, THAILAND

ARTICLEINFO ABSTRACT Article history: Received 24 November 2015 Received in revised form 29 August 2016 Accepted 06 September 2016 Available online 09 September 2016

Keywords: dashcam; video footage; accident awareness; realtime accident monitoring system.

Dashboard cameras (dashcam) become more and more popular due to decreased prices but with higher video qualities. With dashcam, many accidents cases are recorded and distributed as well as webcasted and highlighted to others to possibly learn the causes of accidents. Using dashcam for traffic and accident monitoring system, this work identifies some that were recorded accidents under different situations. The real time accident epoch can be observed and also images can be captured from dashcam footages. The captured images can be enhanced via digital image processing functions in imaging software. From many explored video footages, it finds that dashboard camera is very effective traffic monitoring system. Learning from many video footages accidents, it is hoped that road drivers/users seeing these accident footages will get more awareness in increasing awareness/carefulness on the roadways. © 2016 INT TRANS J ENG MANAG SCI TECH.

1. Introduction Traffic road accidents cost huge loss to all stakeholders. information during 2009-2013.

Table 1 gives accident data

Even though number of accidents decreased, but numbers of

injuries and death keep increasing. Many accidents cases, drivers or eyewitnesses may not fully explain what happen before and during the accidents. However, if there is a CCTV or dashboard camera installed in the accident area, the accident case then can be fully investigated together with other evidences of the accident circumstance. In addition, these accident video footages from dashboard camera give a way to see and learn about accidents cases, like in real time. This work explores dashboard accident footages available on the web, by taking photo shots of the accidents. These cases may give awareness to all road users. *Corresponding author (B. Witchayangkoon). Tel: +66-2-5643005 ext.3101 E-mail: [email protected]. 2016. International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies. Volume 7 No.3 ISSN 2228-9860 eISSN 1906-9642. Online at http://TUENGR.COM/V07/157.pdf.

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Table 1: Thailand Accident data (MOT, 2015) Type\ Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Reported Accidents 93,923 83,336 68,781 61,194 61,323 62,494 Injuries 16,404 18,667 22,346 22,344 20,906 20,689 Death 5,722 7,996 9,496 8,745 7,364 6,336

2. Literature Review A decade ago, Raisinghani and Narayanan [2] invented an automatic collision triggered video system in which the recording system is responsive to an automotive controls system. The video recording system with a video camera was capable of capturing still photos or video footage. When a collision has occurred, the system will activate one or more sensors capable of detecting and sending an actuation signal, causing the video recording system to start capturing photos or video footage. Conche and Tight [3] assessed a potential use for images collected through CCTV cameras in urban areas to understand the causes of road accidents. The study area was central Leeds in UK. Their work considered effectiveness of cameras and video records giving contributory factor information of accidents. They concluded that CCTV has a high potential in providing evidence about many contributory factors. Lee [4] studied an accident detection system on highway through CCTV with calogero-moser system. The work tried to overcome shadow and night time to make accurate detector system and, in statistics sense, found the flow of vehicle trace alike to level spacing distribution as Wigner distribution. The study derived a probability induced by different of position for each lane and was able to find abrupt state of vehicle flow comparing with normal flow. Kurdi [5] reviewed state-of-the-art CCTV systems used for traffic control applications, by highlighting existing architectural and deployment models, and various approaches utilised to analyse generated traffic data, providing examples of prominent work on each approach. There are many studies about road accidents for example, accidents are observed from dashcam under various conditions [6]. Temrungsie et al. [7] studied road accidents factors and did AHP analysis for prioritization these factors using information from selected groups of respondents. From these studies, CCTV seems to give multi benefits to traffic monitoring and management. However, CCTV is rather stationary and can only record data at a specific direction. Dashboard camera, on the other hand, can record data along the roadway where the vehicle goes. This work focuses on giving some examples of how accidents happen as recorded from dashboard footages.

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Boonsap Witchyangkoon, and Sayan Sirimontree

3. Examples of Dashboard Accident Footage 3.1 Accident under Raining Condition The example shows the car with dashboard camera was suddenly cut in its lane by another minitruck. The cut-in truck came with speed and hit the concrete barrier and then spun around. The case happened on AH2 highway road during Chai Nat province under heavy rain, April 2013. Luckily no injuries have been reported. In Figure 1, the images have been zoomed, cropped, and improved its (histogram) contrast by 75%. For each epoch, the image shows also date and time of accident.

Figure 1: Accident under Raining Condition [8].

3.2 Motorbike Accident A dashboard camera was able to record a motorbike accident happened in January 2011. The motorbike ran quick and went ahead to hit a vehicle in front to it, and then fell down. This accident location is on a gentle ramp to the bridge of the roadway in the afternoon local time. With a more flexible movement, this motorbike accident happened just in seconds.

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Figure 2: Motorbike accident [11]. *Corresponding author (B. Witchayangkoon). Tel: +66-2-5643005 ext.3101 E-mail: [email protected]. 2016. International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies. Volume 7 No.3 ISSN 2228-9860 eISSN 1906-9642. Online at http://TUENGR.COM/V07/157.pdf.

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3.3 Double Trailer Truck Accident The accident was happened on a three-lane road, see Figure 3. While the car with a dashboard camera and the mini-truck in front of it were on leftmost lane with little speed, the double trailer truck came fast in the middle lane. The trailer swayed onto the mini-truck. The mini-truck was able to escape this accident with little damage to the vehicle body.

Figure 3: Accident due to loss of stability of a double trailer truck [9].

3.4 Accident at a pedestrian crosswalk The mini-truck with a dashboard camera hit three girl scouts after school on a three-lane road in Trat Province, east of Thailand. After school, these three girl scouts were running over a crossroad to the other side of the road. There was also another mini-truck on the middle lane stopping for students to cross the road. The mini-truck with a dashboard camera hit all three girl scouts with one of them flew away about ten meters from the hitting point, see Figure 4.

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Figure 4: Accident at a pedestrian crosswalk [12].

3.5 Accident at the T-junction A vehicle with a dashboard camera was running slow into the right turn lane at the T-junction. This T-junction has no traffic light. There was one mini-truck in this lane and ready to turn right to the T-leg of the T-junction. There was also another double cab mini-truck at T-leg of the T-junction trying to turn right to the main street. This double cab mini-truck waited for a while and then decided to cross over. While this double cab mini-truck almost get through, then another truck on the main street came quick and crashed the double cab mini-truck and swayed to hit the mini-truck that wanted to get the T-leg of the T-junction, see Figure 5. All captured images are enhanced with edge enhancement.

Figure 5: Accident at a T-junction [10]. *Corresponding author (B. Witchayangkoon). Tel: +66-2-5643005 ext.3101 E-mail: [email protected]. 2016. International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies. Volume 7 No.3 ISSN 2228-9860 eISSN 1906-9642. Online at http://TUENGR.COM/V07/157.pdf.

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4. Discussion With dashboard camera video footages, it is possible to extract visual-based information such as speeds, traffic conditions, types and driving characteristic of vehicles, as well as the occurrences of before and during the accidents. All video footages are stored locally in memory card (flash card), each clip with 3-5 minutes long. The dashboard system is looped recording such that the oldest file is replaced with the recent file. Voice and conversation in vehicle is also recorded with the video footages. Quality of video footage and captured images can be enhanced through combination of digital image processing features such histo-contrast, sharpness, edge enhance, brightness etc. Being digital form, dashboard accident footages can be repeatedly viewed for throughout investigations the causes of accidents. At the moment, many accident footages have been shared through social media such as WhatsApp®, Line®, Twitter®, YouTube®, and Facebook®. Criticisms and comments are widely discussed for factors contributed to the causes of accidents. These social media indirectly serve as learning platforms to viewers and hope in the future the similar accidents may be avoided.

5. Conclusion Dashboard camera (dashcam) is proofed to be an effective instrument to record road accidents. The traffic wrong doers cannot argue as the case being recorded, viewed, and even distributed to others to possibly learn the causes of accidents. Using dashcam for traffic and accident monitoring system, this work identifies some video footages that were recorded on the roads in Thailand. From dashcam footages, the real time accident epoch can be observed and also images can be captured and improved via digital image processing technique. It is hoped that road drivers who see this accident footages will get more and more awareness and alertness on the road while they drive. The attempt of this paper is to control over road accident which is rapidly happening in everyday life through dashboard camera traffic monitoring system.

6. Acknowledgement Authors are thankful for Dr. R.M. Jha (B K Birla Institute of Engineering & Technology, Pilani, India) for discussion and comments, to enhance this work.

7. References [1] MOT. (2015). Accident Statistics Classified According to Type of Transportation. Ministry of Transportation of Thailand. http://www.news.mot.go.th/motc/portal/graph/excel/tab16.xls Accessed July 2015 [2] Raisinghani, V., & Narayanan, V. (2004). Automatic collision triggered video system. U.S. Patent Application 10/786,635. 162


[3] Conche, F., & Tight, M. (2006). Use of CCTV to determine road accident factors in urban areas. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 38(6), 1197-1207. [4] Lee, I. J. (2012). An accident detection system on highway through CCTV with calogero-moser system. In Communications (APCC), 2012 18th Asia-Pacific Conference on (pp. 522-525). IEEE Xplore. [5] Kurdi, H. A. (2013). Survey on Traffic Control using Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). In The International Conference on Digital Information Processing, E-Business and Cloud Computing (DIPECC2013) (pp. 133-138). The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communication. [6] Witchayangkoon, B. 2016. Accidents Observed from Dashcam under Various Conditions. [7] Temrungsie, W., Raksuntron, W., Namee, S., Chayanan, S., & Witchayangkoon, B. (2015). AHP-based Prioritization on Road Accidents Factors: A Case Study of Thailand. International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies, 6(4), 135-144. [8] Chili. (2013). Cutting in its lane by the another car. Video footage available from http://www.clipmass.com/movie/1064121599419324 Accessed July 2015. [9] Social Clip. (2015a). Accident Clip as Double Trailer Truck Losing Its Balance. Video footage available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWijHYHPqCI Accessed July 2015. [10] Social Clip. (2015b). Collection of Thailand 2015 Accident Clips. Video footage available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-hzVgfWLyQ Accessed July 2015. [11] ThaiBlackBox. (2013). Accident Footage from a Dashboard Camera. Video footage available from https://youtu.be/eqgYvSxNlVA Accessed July 2015 [12] TratTV Clip. (2015). Three students crossing a road hit by a mini-truck with one severe injury. Video footage available from https://youtu.be/aaZzyx6lr_0 Accessed July 2015. Dr. Boonsap Witchayangkoon is an Associate Professor of Department of Civil Engineering at Thammasat University. He received his B.Eng. from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi with Honors in 1991. He earned his PhD from University of Maine, USA in Spatial Information Science & Engineering. Dr. Witchayangkoon current interests involve applications of emerging technologies to engineering. Dr. Sayan Sirimontree earned his bachelor degree from Khonkaen University Thailand, master degree in Structural Engineering from Chulalongkorn University Thailand and PhD in Structural Engineering from Khonkaen University Thailand. He is an Associate Professor at Thammasat University Thailand. He is interested in durability of concrete, repair and strengthening of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. Note: The original of this article was accepted and presented at The 4th International Symposium on Engineering, Energy and Environments (ISEEE 2015), held at Thammasat University Pattaya Campus, Thailand, during 8-10 November 2015.

*Corresponding author (B. Witchayangkoon). Tel: +66-2-5643005 ext.3101 E-mail: [email protected]. 2016. International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies. Volume 7 No.3 ISSN 2228-9860 eISSN 1906-9642. Online at http://TUENGR.COM/V07/157.pdf.

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