Traffic safety is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by advances in data science, sensing technologies, and computational modeling. Proactive approaches are enabling the early identification of potential hazards, real-time decision-making, and the development of smarter, safer transportation systems. This Special Issue summarizes recent progress in traffic safety assessment, highlighting the application of emerging tools such as machine learning, explainable artificial intelligence, and computer vision. These innovations are used to predict crash risks, evaluate surrogate safety measures, and automate the analysis of behavioral data, contributing to more inclusive and adaptive safety frameworks, particularly for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The research also addresses key challenges, including data integration across diverse sources, aligning safety metrics with human perception, and ensuring the scalability of models in complex environments. By advancing both technical methodologies and human-centered evaluation, these developments signal a shift toward more intelligent, transparent, and equitable approaches to traffic safety assessment and policy-making.
Li et al. (Mon,) studied this question.