Wild horse crossing events are a major concern for highway safety in rural and suburban areas in many states of the United States. This paper provides a practical and real-time approach to detecting wild horses crossing highways using 3D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology. The developed LiDAR data processing procedure includes background filtering, object clustering, object tracking, and object classification.
Considering that the background information collected by LiDAR may change over time, an automatic background filtering method that updates the background in real-time has been developed to subtract the background effectively over time. After a standard object clustering and a fast object tracking method, eight features were extracted from the clustering group, including a feature developed to specifically identify wild horses, and a vertical point distribution was used to describe the objects.
The classification results of the four classifiers were compared, and the experiments showed that the support vector machine (SVM) had more reliable results. The field test results showed that the developed method could accurately detect a wild horse within the detection range of LiDAR. The wild horse crossing information can warn drivers about the risks of wild horse–vehicle collisions in real-time.
Wildlife–vehicle collision (WVC) is a global issue. With the continuous increase in the number of WVCs in many countries in recent years, it has begun to receive more attention. In Nevada, vehicle collisions with wild and domestic animals result in an average of more than 500 reported collisions each year, costing the Nevada public more than USD 19 million in collision costs and an estimated 5032 wildlife deaths. Of these wildlife–vehicle collisions, those involving deer, cattle, and wild horses average over 340 per year and are responsible for the vast majority of wildlife–vehicle severe collisions [1].
From a paper by Z. Wang et al.
Therefore, to improve traffic safety, reduce property damage caused by such accidents, and protect these animals, there is an urgent need to develop appropriate methods to reduce such accidents. Some state departments of transportation have chosen to install warning signs at multiple incident locations to alert road users to wildlife crossing the street [2], but previous studies have shown that simply installing warning signs is ineffective in reducing wildlife–vehicle collisions [3].
It is widely known that the rectangular rapid flashing beacon (RRFB) installed at crosswalks effectively increases drivers’ yield rate at the location [4]. The difference between the two types of equipment may be the reason for this contradictory result. The RRFB only flashes when a pedestrian is crossing the street, whereas the warning sign for wild horses keeps flashing all the time or does not flash, so for the drivers who come the first time, this sign may have some influence.
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