Deal or no deal: can incentives encourage widespread adoption of intelligent speed adaptation devices?

Given the burden of injury, economic, environmental and social consequences associated with speeding, reducing road traffic speed remains a major priority. Intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) is a promising but controversial new in-vehicle system that provides drivers with support on the speed-control task. In order to model potential system uptake, this paper explores drivers’ preferences for two different types of ISA given a number of alternative fiscal incentives and non-fiscal measures, using a stated preference approach. As would be expected with such a contentious issue, the analysis revealed the presence of significant variations in sensitivities and preferences in the sample. While a non-negligible part of the sample population has such strong opposition to ISA that no reasonable discounts or incentives would lead to them buying or accepting such a system, there is also a large part of the population that, if given the right incentives, would be willing or even keen to equip their vehicle with an ISA device

Driving simulator motion base right sizing

Driving simulator motion bases are available having various mechanisms and characteristics; among them, the synergistic 6DoF hexapod-type integrated with a sliding rail is the most commonly used. There is a large variety in workspaces (sizes) of both the hexapod and sliding rail used in research and training simulators, and there lacks consensus on what size of motion base is really needed in order to have high fidelity motion cueing. In this paper we introduce an approach that balances between having high fidelity motion cueing and at the same time addressing the minimum size requirement to reduce the purchase cost. A conventional classic motion cueing algorithm (MCA) is used together with an optimization method to establish the minimum workspace requirement, while meeting the fidelity criteria defined in literature. The right sizing requirements are driving task dependent, so in order to test this method, low and high motion-demanding driving tasks are tested using the experimental data collected from professional drivers. A standard (high) and a reduced (low) amount of tilt coordination is selected, showing how this defines a range of rail sizes to consider

Special issue in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour: The role of fitness to drive in traffic safety and mobility

Special issue in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic psychology and behaviour: The role of fitness to drive in traffic safety and mobility [Editorial

Managing nonuniformities and uncertainties in vehicle-oriented sensor data over next generation networks

Detailed and accurate vehicle-oriented sensor data is considered fundamental for efficient vehicle-to-everything V2X communication applications, especially in the upcoming highly heterogeneous, brisk and agile 5G networking era. Information retrieval, transfer and manipulation in real-time offers a small margin for erratic behavior, regardless of its root cause. This paper presents a method for managing nonuniformities and uncertainties found on datasets, based on an elaborate Matrix Completion technique, with superior performance in three distinct cases of vehicle-related sensor data, collected under real driving conditions. Our approach appears capable of handling sensing and communication irregularities, minimizing at the same time the storage and transmission requirements of Multi-access Edge Computing applications

Evaluating the effects of bilingual traffic signs on driver performance and safety

Variable Message Signs (VMS) can provide immediate and relevant information to road users and bilingual VMS can provide great flexibility in countries where a significant proportion of the population speak an alternative language to the majority. The study reported here evaluates the effect of various bilingual VMS configurations on driver behaviour and safety. The aim of the study was to determine whether or not the visual distraction associated with bilingual VMS signs of different configurations (length, complexity) impacted on driving performance. A driving simulator was used to allow full control over the scenarios, road environment and sign configuration and both longitudinal and lateral driver performance was assessed. Drivers were able to read one and two-line monolingual signs and two-line bilingual signs without disruption to their driving behaviour. However, drivers significantly reduced their speed in order to read four-line monolingual and four-line bilingual signs, accompanied by an increase in headway to the vehicle in front. This implies that drivers are possibly reading the irrelevant text on the bilingual sign and various methods for reducing this effect are discussed

Evaluation of Vehicle Ride Height Adjustments Using a Driving Simulator

Testing of vehicle design properties by car manufacturers is primarily performed on-road and is resource-intensive, involving costly physical prototypes and large time durations between evaluations of alternative designs. In this paper, the applicability of driving simulators for the virtual assessment of ride, steering and handling qualities was studied by manipulating vehicle air suspension ride height (RH) (ground clearance) and simulator motion platform (MP) workspace size. The evaluation was carried out on a high-friction normal road, routinely used for testing vehicle prototypes, modelled in a driving simulator, and using professional drivers. The results showed the differences between the RHs were subjectively distinguishable by the drivers in many of the vehicle attributes. Drivers found standard and low RHs more appropriate for the vehicle in terms of the steering and handling qualities, where their performance was deteriorated, such that the steering control effort was the highest in low RH. This indicated inconsistency between subjective preferences and objective performance and the need for alternative performance metrics to be defined for expert drivers. Moreover, an improvement in drivers’ performance was observed, with a reduction of steering control effort, in larger MP configurations

Can infrastructure improvements mitigate unsafe traffic safety culture: A driving simulator study exploring cross cultural differences

This paper presents the results of a cross-cultural study to investigate the influence of traffic safety culture and infrastructure improvements on driver behaviour. To achieve this, the driving style of UK drivers was compared with that of Nigerians with and without experience of driving in the UK. A driving simulator experiment compared the actual driving style of these three groups of drivers in different safety critical scenarios. The simulated road environment varied depending on how much infrastructure was provided (low or high infrastructure). In addition, the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire was used to collect self-reported data on violations, errors and lapses. It was hypothesised that Nigerian drivers with no experience of driving in a UK road system would report and engage in more unsafe driving behaviour compared to the other two groups, and that increasing infrastructure would have little positive benefit. Overall, the results supported these hypotheses, indicating that the behaviours of drivers are interpretable in relation to their traffic safety culture, compared to changes in their driving environment

Mind the gap: drivers underestimate the impact of the behaviour of other traffic on their workload

This study examines the effect of traffic demand on driver workload by varying a range of characteristics of traffic behaviour, in particular focusing on the influence of a lane change performed by a neighbouring vehicle. To examine drivers’ ability to manage their own workload in these traffic situations, a self-initiated, surrogate mobile phone task was presented to them, to coincide with changes in traffic demand. Results showed that whilst participants delayed the initiation of the task when the lane change was performed in close proximity to them, the delay was insufficient to mitigate the effects of the increased workload, leading to task errors. This was attributed to driver’s willingness to engage in secondary tasks, even though their (self-reported) workload had not returned to baseline levels. The minimum workload recovery period was calculated as being 12 seconds after the onset of the adjacent vehicle’s manoeuvre, and this has implications for the design of workload managers

ACC design for safety and fuel efficiency: the acceptance of safety margins when adopting different driving styles

For adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems to be accepted and used safely, the transitions from cruise control mode to necessary driver intervention need to be obvious to the driver. Previous research shows that drivers have natural boundaries for acceptable values for time headway and time to collision to a car in front, which define at what point they are likely to step on the brake pedal. These boundaries can define an intuitive limit for ACC engagement. However, such boundaries may not be the same for all drivers, and not even for the same driver, whose goals may vary. The present research aimed to measure mental model boundaries in the context of different goals with a motorway cut-in scenario in a driving simulator. Participants drove in three conditions, after being asked to ‘drive safely, ‘drive fuel-efficiently’ and after no specific instructions. The results show that both the safe and eco-driving instructions led drivers to brake at longer safety margins. These findings indicate that, as drivers follow different goals, e.g. as they are reminded to drive safely or eco-friendly, their preferences for operational limits of ACCs may change. This needs to be taken into account for design decisions, e.g. using ‘safe’ and ‘eco’ modes when driving