Study of designs and accident scenarios involving a tram and road vehicle

There are many intersections on French tramway networks where road vehicles make turns before crossing the tram tracks. These are the third most accident-prone intersections for tram traffic.

An initial study carried out in 2013 under the oversight of CEREMA identified the issues and problems related to these configurations through examples taken from the tramway network in Lyon. The study was supplemented in 2017 by CEREMA, in cooperation with STRMTG, with an accident analysis of 150 intersections of this type on the Lyon tramway network in order to identify the factors that seem to influence the accident rate.

However, it quickly became clear that the field of investigation needed to be extended to other networks and that the factors contributing to accidents needed to be analysed in greater detail.

In 2018, STRMTG tasked ERA Ingénieurs Conseil with a study of accident scenarios between a tramway and a road vehicle, and the various configurations of the most accident-prone intersections, i.e. those managed with dedicated R11v and R14 signals and R24 crossing signals.

The findings of the study, released in the 1st quarter of 2020, led to the formalization of proposed general and specific recommendations for the configurations studied.