How Understanding Near-Misses Can Improve Road Safety

Are we neglecting key data about near-misses at intersections in urban mobility and road safety? An article in Cities Today argues that, while many cities are redesigning intersections to improve safety using crash reports, “one critical layer of data is often missing: insight into what almost went wrong.”

The article posits that paying closer attention to near-misses can offer “a transformative addition to traditional urban traffic planning” and help planners understand dangerous intersections before fatal crashes occur.

According to Cities Today, “To fill this gap, Flow Analytics by AGC applies high-resolution LiDAR and AI-based trajectory analysis to monitor the movement of all road users, including vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. The system observes these interactions in real time, identifying conflict points as they happen.”

Several European cities are already testing the technology to detect and act on near misses. “New technologies are enabling cities to understand not just where people travel, but how those journeys unfold—and where conflicts occur. By capturing these dynamics, near-miss detection helps uncover risks that conventional systems might miss entirely.”