Assessment of Preemption Signal Control Strategy for Emergency Vehicles in Korea

Signalized intersections are operated without a signal preemption control strategy in Korea, thus there is no priority treatment for an emergency vehicle passing through the intersections. In this paper, a signal preemption control strategy is introduced to improve the safety and operational efficiency of an emergency vehicle. Using the micro simulation tool, the effects on delay and travel speed of the signal preemption control strategy are analyzed for various traffic conditions to identify the general performance trends. Then, another simulation analysis is performed to verify the feasibility of the control strategy using real network data collected from field study. Results show that the preemption control strategy provides the positive impact on emergency vehicles' operation, but the positive impact is reduced as the v/c ratios increase. As expected, the average delays of the normal vehicles are slightly increased, but the magnitude is not significant. Therefore, it is expected that the introduction of the preemption control strategy in Korea would produce the positive social benefits.