Transoft Safety Lab
Transoft Safety Lab was created to address the needs and challenges in research and practice in road safety.
Our mission is to contribute to knowledge generation in road safety through:
- Providing a platform where the road safety community can research, develop and test new ideas in order to reduce fatalities and serious injuries.
- Improving research through the cumulative efforts of Transoft Solutions experts, researchers from universities and research institutes, and road safety practitioners.
- Disseminating new concepts and innovative solutions to improve and advance road safety knowledge and practices.
Collaborative Research
In an effort to keep surrogate safety research moving forward, Transoft is pleased to share data with academic researchers. Analysis results include CSV sheets containing conflict data using post-encroachment time (PET) and time-to-collision (TTC), road user counts and classification, speed data, and more.
Who is Transoft Safety Lab for?
Transoft Safety Lab is designed for road safety researchers from universities and research institutes globally, as well as for traffic engineers in transportation agencies and consulting firms.
For Researchers:
Access road safety data such as raw data, ground truth, speed, trajectory, and conflict data
Process video to generate road safety results using TrafxSAFE for research purposes
Collaborate in joint research activities with academia
For Practitioners:
Transportation Engineers and Consulting Firms
Learn about surrogate safety through training
Collaborate on projects with Transoft’s road safety experts and fellow road safety practitioners and researchers
Exchange best practices and case studies
The Transoft Academic Program supports researchers and their
important studies by providing free video analysis.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help.
Meet the Team
Transoft Safety Lab is only possible with the collaboration of worldwide leading researchers in the field, cities, and industrial partners paving the way for the shared goal of improving road safety.
The Transoft Safety Lab research and development team consists of:
Paul G. St-Aubin, P.Eng., Ph.D.
Paul is a licensed transportation research engineer located in Montréal, Québec, currently working as a Senior Product Manager at Transoft Solutions (ITS) and as a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of Waterloo. He was also a postdoctoral researcher at IVADO/HEC Montréal. He specializes and is professionally interested in several civil engineering and computer science topics, particularly where these two intersect, including surrogate safety measures, driver behaviour, advanced collision detection, traffic data collection systems, and computer vision. He has also published several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers in the field of road safety and surrogate safety measures.
Alireza Jafari, Ph.D., RSP1
Alireza has a Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering and over 7 years of experience in road safety analysis. Before joining to Transoft Solutions, he was a postdoctoral fellow affiliated at Ryerson University. He specializes in developing statistical models to estimate crash frequency and crash severity. He has published several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His research on conflict-based crash prediction models has won national and international awards, including the best research and evaluation paper at the CARSP conference, 2019.
Bismarck Navarro, Ph.D., M.Eng.
Bismarck is a Ph.D. Candidate at McGill University and a project manager at Transoft Solutions. He has more than five years of experience in road safety analysis using proactive measures and over 10 years of project management. The areas of expertise of M.Eng. Navarro are users’ safety at intersections, user’s behaviour, traffic data technologies and computer vision analysis. He also has taught transportation engineering classes at McGill University and continues research and teaching proactive safety analysis.
ADVISOR
Luis Miranda-Moreno, Ph.D
Luis is a professor at the civil engineering department of McGill University. His specialty is in transportation engineering with a focus on road safety, traffic monitoring and demand modeling, and sustainable transport strategies. His research interests include the development of crash-risk analysis methods, the integration of emergency technologies for traffic monitoring, the impact of climate on transportation systems, the analysis of short and long-term changes in travel demand, the impact of transport on the environment, the evaluation of energy efficiency measures and non-motorized transportation.
Check Out our Previous Event
Transoft Safety Lab, in collaboration with iTSS Lab recently hosted its second virtual Road Safety Research Workshop, “Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) Safety: Alternative Approaches and Practical Applications.”
The event was held last December 2021 and featured presentations by Dr. Marie-Soleil Cloutier, professor at INRS UCS and scientific director at Pedestrian and Urban Space Laboratory (LAPS), Dr. Thomas Götschi, a researcher at the University of Oregon who lead the development of HEAT project for walking and cycling for World Health Organization, and Dr. Matin Nabavi Niaki, cyclist safety researcher at SWOV (the National Scientific Institute for Road Safety Research, Netherlands).
Presenters from the Transoft Safety Lab 2021
Dr. Liping Fu
Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Waterloo
Dr. Marie-Soleil Cloutier
Professor at INRS UCS / Scientific Director
at Pedestrian and Urban Space Laboratory (LAPS)
Dr. Thomas Götschi
Researcher at University of Oregon / Lead for HEAT project for walking and cycling for World Health Organization
Dr. Matin Nabavi Niaki
Cyclist safety researcher at SWOV (National Scientific Institute for Road Safety Research, Netherlands)
The Transoft Safety Lab hosted its inaugural TSL Road Safety Workshop on June 16, 2021.
If you’re a transportation practitioner or researcher interested in advancing your understanding of new tools and approaches to evaluating the safety performance of transportation decisions on all road user types, then you’ll want to watch the recorded sessions and lively panel discussions at the following video links.
Presenter:
• Nora Hallett (Transportation Engineer | City of Toronto)
Moderator:
• Adrian Pearmine (National Director for Smart Cities
and Connected Vehicles | DKS Associates)
Panelists:
• Annie Chang (Director of Safety Programs | Lime)
• Lindsey Van Parys (Manager, Road Systems | GHD Group)
• Chris Svolopoulos (Associate Civil Engineer | Seattle DOT)
Presenter:
• David Wasserman (Data Science Practice Leader | Alta Planning + Design)
Moderator:
• Geoffrey L. Price (ITS/Traffic Engineer | AECOM)
Panelists:
• Bill Singleton (Vice President | Ecopia AI)
• Venessa Skelton (Transportation Planning Lead | GHD Group)
• Franz Lowrenherz (Principal Transportation Planner | City of Bellevue)
2021 ITE Vision Zero Design Sandbox
We are the sponsors for the 2021 ITE Vision Zero Design Sandbox Competition. Transoft is pleased to participate alongside the City of Bellevue in this initiative, with our video-based road safety solutions being the key analytics tool for participants.
Contact us to request a copy of the dataset used for this competition.
Further Reading
Development of Crash Risk Prediction System for the Regional Municipality of Durham In partnership with the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) led by the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI) and the Regional Municipality of Durham
The project will extend the core capabilities of Transoft’s automated road safety solutions to allow collision courses between road users to be predicted in real-time. The system will include near-miss notification alerts and a system for forecasting long-term safety problems.
Rural Road Merge Lane Analysis and Scooter and Cyclist Safety in Europe
In partnership with the Austrian Institute of Technology
Transoft Solutions is working with the Austrian Institute of Technology to analyze rural road merge lanes in Lower Austria in order to evaluate merging maneuvers, merging conflicts, and accelerations. In addition, the Institute and Transoft Solutions are working on projects focused on push scooter, e-scooter and cyclist safety and behavior in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.
Before-After Analysis of Roundabouts and Intersections in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia In partnership with the World Bank Group
Transoft Solutions analyzed a total of 25 intersections and roundabouts in Addis Ababa Ethiopia for conflict risk and severity. The World Bank Group is using the data to determine and implement changes at the sites, after which point an “after” study will be completed to evaluate the change in safety.
Before-After Analysis of Intersection Redesign for Cyclists in The Hague, Netherlands In partnership with SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research
The project consisted of an analysis of two intersections in The Hague, the Netherlands before and after the redesign of painted bike lanes. Based on the analysis, the countermeasures implementations were found to be successful in reducing collision risk and severity.
Video Analytics of Curb Occupancy and Sidewalk Usage in Latin America
In partnership with International Development Bank
Transoft Solutions, in partnership with International Development Bank, studied various metrics of curb usage such as truck curb occupancy in Bogotá, Colombia, and sidewalk pedestrian density in Mexico City.
Selected Publications
The following is a list of selected publications that are based on projects conducted in different countries and with various objectives.
L Samara, P St-Aubin, F Loewenherz, N Budnick, L Miranda-Moreno
B Ledezma-Navarro, L Miranda-Moreno, N Saunier
L Scholl, M Elagaty, B Ledezma-Navarro, E Zamora, L Miranda-Moreno
J Stipancic, L Miranda-Moreno, N Saunier, A Labbe
D Beitel, J Stipancic, K Manaugh, L Miranda-Moreno
Investigating the gender differences on bicycle-vehicle conflicts at urban intersections using an ordered logit methodology (2016)
J Stipancic, S Zangenehpour, L Miranda-Moreno, N Saunier, MA Granié. Accident Analysis & Prevention 97, 19-27