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Main Authors: Chen, Huan, Han, Ting, Chen, Siyu, Guo, Zhihao, Chen, Yiping, Wu, Meiliu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15434
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author Chen, Huan
Han, Ting
Chen, Siyu
Guo, Zhihao
Chen, Yiping
Wu, Meiliu
author_facet Chen, Huan
Han, Ting
Chen, Siyu
Guo, Zhihao
Chen, Yiping
Wu, Meiliu
contents Street-view imagery (SVI) offers a fine-grained lens on traffic risk, yet two fundamental challenges persist: (1) how to construct street-level indicators that capture accident-related features, and (2) how to quantify their causal impacts across different accident types. To address these challenges, we propose Semantic4Safety, a framework that applies zero-shot semantic segmentation to SVIs to derive 11 interpretable streetscape indicators, and integrates road type as contextual information to analyze approximately 30,000 accident records in Austin. Specifically, we train an eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) multi-class classifier and use Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) to interpret both global and local feature contributions, and then apply Generalized Propensity Score (GPS) weighting and Average Treatment Effect (ATE) estimation to control confounding and quantify causal effects. Results uncover heterogeneous, accident-type-specific causal patterns: features capturing scene complexity, exposure, and roadway geometry dominate predictive power; larger drivable area and emergency space reduce risk, whereas excessive visual openness can increase it. By bridging predictive modeling with causal inference, Semantic4Safety supports targeted interventions and high-risk corridor diagnosis, offering a scalable, data-informed tool for urban road safety planning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_15434
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semantic4Safety: Causal Insights from Zero-shot Street View Imagery Segmentation for Urban Road Safety
Chen, Huan
Han, Ting
Chen, Siyu
Guo, Zhihao
Chen, Yiping
Wu, Meiliu
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Street-view imagery (SVI) offers a fine-grained lens on traffic risk, yet two fundamental challenges persist: (1) how to construct street-level indicators that capture accident-related features, and (2) how to quantify their causal impacts across different accident types. To address these challenges, we propose Semantic4Safety, a framework that applies zero-shot semantic segmentation to SVIs to derive 11 interpretable streetscape indicators, and integrates road type as contextual information to analyze approximately 30,000 accident records in Austin. Specifically, we train an eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) multi-class classifier and use Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) to interpret both global and local feature contributions, and then apply Generalized Propensity Score (GPS) weighting and Average Treatment Effect (ATE) estimation to control confounding and quantify causal effects. Results uncover heterogeneous, accident-type-specific causal patterns: features capturing scene complexity, exposure, and roadway geometry dominate predictive power; larger drivable area and emergency space reduce risk, whereas excessive visual openness can increase it. By bridging predictive modeling with causal inference, Semantic4Safety supports targeted interventions and high-risk corridor diagnosis, offering a scalable, data-informed tool for urban road safety planning.
title Semantic4Safety: Causal Insights from Zero-shot Street View Imagery Segmentation for Urban Road Safety
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15434