# GPT-4V as Traffic Assistant: An In-depth Look at Vision Language Model on Complex Traffic Events

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.02205 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02205/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Driving VLMs and open-vocabulary detection, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 10 of its 16 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Driving VLMs and open-vocabulary detection](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/driving-vlms-and-open-vocabulary-detection/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [The Dawn of LMMs: Preliminary Explorations with GPT-4V(ision)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17421/) (2023)
- [SUTD-TrafficQA: A Question Answering Benchmark and an Efficient Network for Video Reasoning over Traffic Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15538/) (2021)
- [On the Road with GPT-4V(ision): Early Explorations of Visual-Language Model on Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05332/) (2023)
- [A9-Dataset: Multi-Sensor Infrastructure-Based Dataset for Mobility Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06527/) (2022)
- [Tem-adapter: Adapting Image-Text Pretraining for Video Question Answer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08414/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [OpenDriveVLA: Towards End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Large Vision Language Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23463/) (2025)
- [Exploring the Roles of Large Language Models in Reshaping Transportation Systems: A Survey, Framework, and Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21411/) (2025)
- [Video-STaR: Self-Training Enables Video Instruction Tuning with Any Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06189/) (2024)
- [When language and vision meet road safety: leveraging multimodal large language models for video-based traffic accident analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10604/) (2025)
- [X-Driver: Explainable Autonomous Driving with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05098/) (2025)
- [Domain-Enhanced Dual-Branch Model for Efficient and Interpretable Accident Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12755/) (2025)
- [CogDriver: Integrating Cognitive Inertia for Temporally Coherent Planning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00789/) (2025)
- [CoT4AD: A Vision-Language-Action Model with Explicit Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22532/) (2025)
- [iFinder: Structured Zero-Shot Vision-Based LLM Grounding for Dash-Cam Video Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19552/) (2025)
- [Towards Vision Zero: The TUM Traffic Accid3nD Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12095/) (2025)
- [Urban Computing in the Era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02009/) (2025)
- [Hierarchical Question-Answering for Driving Scene Understanding Using Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02615/) (2025)
- [TrafficRAG: A Multimodal RAG Framework for Traffic Accident Liability Determination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01737/) (2026)
- [SGTA: Scene-Graph Based Multi-Modal Traffic Agent for Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03697/) (2026)
- [Earth Science Foundation Models: From Perception to Reasoning and Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12542/) (2026)
- [DispatchRAG: Grounding Emergency Dispatch Decisions in Real-World Protocols from Traffic Accident Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23132/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The recognition and understanding of traffic incidents, particularly traffic accidents, is a topic of paramount importance in the realm of intelligent transportation systems and intelligent vehicles. This area has continually captured the extensive focus of both the academic and industrial sectors. Identifying and comprehending complex traffic events is highly challenging, primarily due to the intricate nature of traffic environments, diverse observational perspectives, and the multifaceted causes of accidents. These factors have persistently impeded the development of effective solutions. The advent of large vision-language models (VLMs) such as GPT-4V, has introduced innovative approaches to addressing this issue. In this paper, we explore the ability of GPT-4V with a set of representative traffic incident videos and delve into the model's capacity of understanding these complex traffic situations. We observe that GPT-4V demonstrates remarkable cognitive, reasoning, and decision-making ability in certain classic traffic events. Concurrently, we also identify certain limitations of GPT-4V, which constrain its understanding in more intricate scenarios. These limitations merit further exploration and resolution.