Classification of Incidents Influencing on Driving Safety in Freeway Tunnel Impact Area and the Corresponding Responses

The severity of traffic accidents in the tunnel is different resulted from different traffic incidents. Lots of attention have been focused on the theories and methods of incident detection in the vehicular tunnel. There was little research on the classification of the traffic incidents along the freeway tunnel impact area, which determine the response efficiency and the effectiveness of the rescue. This study was trying to classify the traffic incidents influencing on driving safety along the freeway tunnel impact area. According to the literature review, twenty-two traffic incidents were analyzed and three types were proposed, including incidents between vehicles, Individual vehicle incident, and others. The severities were determined into five scales and the expert scoring method was adopted to evaluate the severities of the 22 traffic incidents. At the same time, the weights of different levels of experts were determined in order to guarantee the statistical significance of evaluation results. The result showed that professors in the field of road traffic safety and senior experts for traffic accident identification have the most weight from all experts. In the light of evaluation results, the severities were classified into three levels, serious incidents, relatively serious incidents, and slightly serious incidents. The incident fire influence on the driving safety the most along the freeway tunnel impact area. Finally, the responses and the relative agencies were proposed for the three classifications respectively. The result of this study can provide guidance for the emergency responses in the light of the severities of traffic incidents happened in the freeway tunnel impact area.