Automated Driving Systems (ADS) are aimed to improve traffic efficiency and safety, however these systems are not yet capable of handling all driving tasks in all types of road conditions. The role of a human driver remains crucial in taking over control, if an ADS fails or reaches its operational limits. Takeover performance of human drivers in authority transitions is typically assessed by means of the takeover time (TOT) taken within an available time budget (TB). This approach assumes a uniform perception and reaction time of human drivers in ADS disengagements, and does not include the time needed to execute the actual driving maneuver required to ensure safety. This paper aims to develop and test a set of new indicators to reflect takeover performance and its safety attributes, namely the ‘time to control’ (TC) and the ‘safe time budget’ (STB), in which the actual task execution (i.e. braking) time is taken into account, in addition to the perception and reaction time. It also proposes new thresholds for identifying critical conflicts in takeover situations and assessing the safety of authority transitions. A traffic simulation experimental setup is used with mixed traffic of conventional vehicles and ACC/CACC platoons in order to test these indicators and thresholds. The results suggest that the time difference between TC and STB is a more sensitive and potentially more realistic safety indicator, as it may capture the variability of driver behavior in takeovers and identify critical conflicts, as well as virtual crashes, that would not have been identified by the previously used indicators (TOT and TB). Takeover performance worsens when the speed difference of the vehicles involved is higher, and the initial speed of the rear vehicle is higher. These findings can be useful towards a more dynamic design of takeover request strategies.

Truck platooning is the application of cooperative adaptive cruise control where multiple trucks are electronically linked using vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Although truck platoons might bring fuel savings and emission reductions, their interactions with surrounding traffic and resulting impact on traffic operations and safety are not fully understood. The objective of this paper is to evaluate traffic efficiency and safety in a critical traffic situation when truck platoons are introduced in the system. This paper presents a case study of a merging section, located on A15 motorway, near the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. We consider two scenarios: platoons on a mainline carriageway and platoons merging onto a mainline carriageway. We simulate the movements of truck platoons in a microscopic traffic simulator. Longitudinal and lateral controllers for truck platoons, proposed in this paper, can ensure their collision-free, string-stable, and smooth driving behavior. Simulation experiments are conducted by varying platoon characteristics such as market penetration, length, intra-platoon headway, platoon speed, and their ability to create a gap for changing lanes. The results suggest that truck platoons on the mainline carriageway may be detrimental to traffic efficiency and safety in high traffic intensity, whereas truck platoons originating from an on-ramp produce limited impacts. Further, we conduct both local and global sensitivity analyses to analyze the impact of platoon characteristics on traffic efficiency and safety. The findings emphasize that uncertainty in traffic efficiency and safety strongly depends on the interactions among platoon characteristics, traffic demand, and traffic scenarios.

Integrated full-Range Speed Assistance (IRSA) aims to assist drivers in their longitudinal driving task by providing speed advice or warnings and cruise control-like functionalities. This papers presents the development and evaluation of IRSA in four scenarios: Approaching a traffic jam, Approaching a reduced speed limit zone, Leaving the head of a queue and a cutin situation. The results are obtained by application of an integrated tool-suite enabling a consistent assessment of technical functioning, human factors and traffic flow effects.