According to road design guidelines, unsignalized intersections should have certain free sight fields to ensure that vehicles approaching from different directions see each other. However, in many cases these sight fields include some obstacles which cause safety concerns. The identification of these obstacles and the planning of appropriate interventions would improve safety. In this article, we present an analysis method suitable for visibility investigation based on a laser scanner survey. We review the methods developed in recent years to select the visible and hidden points of the point cloud. Based on the presented results, we developed a procedure that is consistent with the concept of sight distance used in the field of road design. The survey was taken from an observation point of the drivers on the minor road and the sightlines were projected onto a reference plane along the major road, considering the required sight distance. The projected results appeared as "shadows" from the visibility obstacles on the reference plane. The visibility difficulties detected can be used to decide the appropriate actions to improve the safety of the intersection.

Many traffic accidents are caused by unforeseen and unexpected events in a site that was hidden from the driver's eyes. Road design parameters determining required visibility are based on relationships formulated decades ago. It is worth reviewing them from time to time in the light of technological developments. In this paper, sight distances for stopping and crossing situations are studied in relation to the assumed visual abilities of autonomous vehicles. Current sight distance requirements at unsignalized intersections are based among others on speeds on the major road and on accepted gaps by human drivers entering or crossing from the minor road. Since these requirements vary from country to country, regulations and sight terms of a few selected countries are compared in this study. From the comparison it is remarkable that although the two concepts, i.e. gap acceptance on the minor road and stopping on the major road have different backgrounds, but their outcome in terms of required sight distances are similar. Both distances are depending on speed on the major road: gap sight distances show a linear, while stopping sight distances a parabolic function. In general, European SSD values are quite similar to each other. However, the US and Australian guidelines based on gap acceptance criteria recommend higher sight distances. Human capabilities and limitations are considered in sight field requirements. Autonomous vehicles survey their environment with sensors which are different from the human vision in terms of identifying objects, estimating distances or speeds of other vehicles. This paper compares current sight field requirements based on conventional vehicles and those required for autonomous vehicles. Visibility requirements were defined by three vision indicators: distance, angle of view and resolution abilities of autonomous cars and human drivers. These indicators were calculated separately for autonomous vehicles and human drivers for various speeds on the main road and for intersections with 90° and 60° angles. It was shown that the required sight distances are 10 to 40 meters shorter for autonomous vehicles than for conventional ones.

Most accidents in roundabouts occur at the entries, partly due to poor visibility. To analyse this problem a sample roundabout with some visibility obstacles was measured by laser scanner and data were put into a 3D model. The fields of view were studied from the viewpoint heights of car and truck drivers as well. To assess the results, three indicators were defined: the hidden sight distance, the hidden sight triangle area and the angle of hide. These indicators were measured in the point cloud model. Through these indicators the adequacy of visibility conditions can be assessed.