Recently, intelligent transportation system based on image processing has been developed. In this paper, we propose a collision detection algorithm based on the analysis of motion vectors and the staying periods of vehicles in intersections. Objects in the region of interest are extracted from the subtraction image between background images based on Gaussian mixture model and input images. Collisions and traffic jams are detected by analysing measured motion vectors of vehicles and their staying periods in intersections. Experiments are performed on video sequences actually recoded at intersections. Correct detection rate and false alarm rate are 85.7% and 7.7%, respectively.