Comparative assessment of safety indicators for vehicle trajectories on the highway

Safety measurement and analysis have been a challenging and well-researched topic in transportation. Conventionally, surrogate safety measures have been used as safety indicators in simulation models for safety assessment, in control formulations for driver assistance systems, and in data analysis of naturalistic driving studies. However,...

What makes driving difficult?: Perceived effort and eye measures follow visible semantic complexity factors

A majority (95%) of crashes can be attributed to humans, with the highest cause category (41%) involving errors of recognition (i.e., inattention, distraction, inadequate surveillance) [1]. Driving safety research often claims that as much as 90% of the information that drivers use is visual. However, these claims have been hampered by a lack of...

Driver behavior and workload in an on-road automated vehicle

Driver mental underload is an important concern in the operational safety of automated driving. In this study, workload was evaluated subjectively (NASA RTLX) and objectively (auditory detection-response task) on Dutch public highways (~150km) in a Tesla Model S comparing manual and supervised automated driving with moderators automation...

Description of a model based bicycle simulator

Recent years have seen an increase in cycling as a transport mode in urban centers. This has spurred an interest in the use of bicycle simulators to study cyclist behavior [1, 2, 3, 4]. However, few implement a model based approach that couples the bicycle roll and steer in a realistic manner [5]. Balancing is a key task in cycling and we aimed...

Modelling the dynamics of driver situation awareness in automated driving

This study presents a numerical model that describes the dynamic process of building situation awareness after an automation-initiated transition. The model predicts the level of situation awareness as a function of elapsed time since the transition, and is verified using data from an experiment in which participants watched animated video...

Optimal lane change times and accelerations of autonomous and connected vehicles

This contribution puts forward a flexible approach to model the decision-making or design controller for automated driving systems, where tactical-level lane change decisions and control-level accelerations are jointly evaluated based on iteratively solving an online optimization problem. The key idea is that automated vehicles determine lane...

A conceptual model to explain, predict, and improve user acceptance of driverless 4P vehicles

This paper represents a synthesis of existing empirical acceptance studies on automated driving and scientific literature on technology acceptance. The objective of this paper is to study user acceptance of driverless vehicles that fall into SAE level 4, as they operate within the constraints of dedicated infrastructure. The review indicates...

Design and analysis of full range adaptive cruise control with integrated collision a voidance strategy

Current Full Range Adaptive Cruise Control (FRACC) systems switch between separate adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance systems. This can lead to jerky responses and discomfort during the transition between the two control modes. We propose a Full Range Adaptive Cruise Control (FRACC) design integrating adaptive cruise control and...

Drowsiness in conditional automation: Proneness, diagnosis and driving performance effects

Fatigue and drowsiness can play an important role in Conditional Automation (CA), as drowsy drivers may fail to properly recover control. In order to provide better insight in the effects of drowsy driving in Take Over Request (TOR), we designed a driving experiment that extends related literature in drowsiness research CA with self-rated...

Towards a real-time driver workload estimator: An on-the-road study

Driver distraction is a leading cause of crashes. The introduction of in-vehicle technology in the last decades has added support to the driving task. However, in-vehicle technologies and handheld electronic devices may also be a threat to driver safety due to information overload and distraction. Adaptive in-vehicle information systems may...

Effect of steering model fidelity on subjective evaluation of truck steering feel

The steering behaviour in a driving simulator has a significant influence on a driving realism. This study investigates the influence of the complexity of a steering-system model on the subjective assessment of truck steering feel in on-centre handling. Ten subjects drove a highway task with and without lateral wind disturbance with 4 steering...

Visual displays for automated driving: A survey

This paper presents the results of a literature survey on visual displays used in automated driving. We describe six visual display designs: (1) a display with three main components, (2) a bird’s-eye view display, (3) an informative speedometer, (4) a head-up display, (5) eye-catching lights for informing, and (6) eye-catching lights for guiding...

Changes of driving performance and gaze behavior of novice drivers during a 30-min simulator-based training

Previous research has shown that novice drivers have underdeveloped vehicle control skills and visual search strategies that differ from those of experienced drivers. However, little is known about how novices’ driving performance and gaze behavior jointly change over the course of practice. In this paper, we investigated changes in driving...

Investigating the effect of a visual search task for simulator-based driver training

Novice drivers tend to direct their gaze to the road ahead and not scan the environment properly. This study investigated the training effectiveness of a visual search task in a driving simulator, aimed at increasing young drivers' spread of visual search. Two groups of inexperienced drivers were instructed to drive as accurately as possible in...