Exploring the Influence of Signal Countdown Timers on Driver Behavior: An Analysis of Pedestrian–Vehicle Conflicts at Signalized Intersections

Although signal countdown timers (SCTs) are likely to enhance efficiency at signalized intersections, there is little research on how they affect road users’ behavior. The present study explores factors associated with driver behavior through two approaches to examine how SCTs influence drivers’ actions toward pedestrians violating red lights....

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Cognitive Modeling of Left-Turn Gap Acceptance Decisions in Human Drivers

Objective: We aim to bridge the gap between naturalistic studies of driver behavior and modern cognitive and neuroscientific accounts of decision making by modeling the cognitive processes underlying left-turn gap acceptance by human drivers. Background: Understanding decisions of human drivers is essential for the development of safe and...

Editorial: Driver Behavior and Performance in an Age of Increasingly Instrumented Vehicles

Driver behavior and performance have been studied extensively in the last decades. Researchers have developed theories and models of driver situational awareness, driver decision-making and errors, information processing, and mental workload. Meanwhile, other scholars have focused on creating and optimizing in-vehicle technology-based...

Behavior-based Predictive Safety Analytics: Pilot study

This report gives an overview of the main findings from the Behavior-based Predictive Safety Analytics – Pilot Study project. The main objective of the project was to investigate the possibilities of developing statistical models predicting individual driver crash involvement based on individual driving style, demographic and behavioral history...

Resuming manual control or not?: Modelling choices of control transitions in full-range adaptive cruise control

Automated vehicles and driving assistance systems such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) are expected to reduce traffic congestion, accidents and levels of emissions. Field Operational Tests have found that drivers may prefer to deactivate ACC in dense traffic flow conditions and before changing lanes. Despite the potential effects of these...

The Effects of Yaw and Sway Motion Cues in Curve Driving Simulation

This paper investigates the importance of yaw and sway motion cues in curve driving simulation. While such motion cues are known to enhance simulation realism, their function in supporting realistic driver behavior in simulators is still largely unknown. A human-in-the-loop curve driving experiment was performed in the SIMONA Research Simulator...

Impact of distracting activities and drivers' cognitive failures on driving performance

The rapid increase in the availability of smart phones and other infotainment devices, and their widespread use while driving, contributes significantly to car crash rates. This is since the human brain has limited capacity and cannot perform two tasks at the same time, but rather switches from one to another rapidly. Understanding of the impact...

Recognizing driving in haste

One can often hear people discussing the reasons why a road accident has happened: “She had to pick up her kids in the school before four o’clock and she was driving in haste and careless”, “He was stressed, he wanted to reach the beginning of the football match, tried to drive faster and didn't appreciate the red light”. In each of these...

Characteristics of Chinese Driver Behavior

The high growth rate of vehicle ownership and many novel drivers in China determine the special features of Chinese driver behavior. This thesis introduces a comparative study on driver behavior by the analysis of saturation flow at urban intersections, Driver Behavior Questionnaire surveys, focus group discussion, and in-car tests. The main...

Calibration of a micro simulation program for a Chinese city

Micro simulation programs are often used to assess the quality of traffic conditions. They are especially suited to evaluate possible control scenarios in advance, so that the scenarios can be selected and optimized before implementation. Of course, the simulation programs should be valid for the traffic situation that has to be modeled with...