Safety

This paper presents a framework to evaluate an automotive rear-end crash avoidance system in a field operational test. This framework is described in terms of the evaluation goals, concomitant objectives, and respective subobjectives. The evaluation will pursue four goals to achieve a detailed understanding of safety benefits, determine driver acceptance, characterize the performance and capability, and assess the deployment potential and price of the automotive rear-end crash avoidance system. Ten instrumented vehicles will be equipped with this system that integrates rear-end crash warning and adaptive cruise control functions. Representative groups of subjects will be selected to test the system over a ten-month period, driving in a naturalistic environment under a variety of typical driving conditions. Each subject will drive an instrumented vehicle for a few weeks. The system will not be available during the first week in order to collect baseline driving data. The subjects will be able to utilize the system in the remaining weeks to gather data on driver-vehicle-system performance.

U.S. Department of Transportation

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 29 –May 2, 2002 Long Beach, California

All over the world, most major roads suffer from the increasing traffic density. This results in more accidents, more vehicles involved, a larger risk for secondary accidents and long traffic jams. Today, increasing traffic volume and complexity has created a need for more optimised & improved ITS technology, highly automatic incident management systems in particular.

Facts & figures such as ‘more than 200.000 people killed each year’ and also the need for more security result in more investments into safer roads and better control of the traffic on highways in general. Today, traffic managers are looking for effective incident management because this can save countless commuter hours, gallons of fuel, and thousands of dollars. Effective incident management completely depends on fast incident detection and fast incident verification. While video detection handles both traffic data collection and automatic incident detection, its incident detection shows a high detection rate, a short time to detect, a fast incident verification and a low false alarm rate. These characteristics make video extremely useful for reaching incident management goals such as fast & effective intervention or secondary incident prevention.

The European research project RHYTHM aims to evaluate the benefits of using video for better traffic flow models and predictions of traffic jams and queue tails. This will further reduce the number of secondary casualties and also reduce the economic costs due to incident generated traffic jams. This article contains a review of the basic characteristics of effective incident management and the role played by video detection as a solid solution. Wide area video incident detection proves to be the best and most reliable detection system currently available.

Traficon n.v., Belgium

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas

The junction between A3 & A86 highways around Paris (France) sees a 2-lane and a 4-lane highway merge onto a 4-lane wide and 700 meter long viaduct. The junction is a heavily congested area. This project aimed at optimizing the road capacity of the viaduct by removing the hard shoulder in order to create an infrastructure with 5 traffic lanes in each direction instead of 4.

An Intelligent Transportation System was designed in order to keep a high level of safety for road users on a road section deprived of a hard shoulder but still experiencing a very dense traffic and a lot of lane switching.

This innovative concept, referred to as “Intelligent hard shoulder” made use of:

• Video surveillance CCTV system
• Video Detection system for Automatic Detection of stopped vehicles
• Information of road users by means of dynamic message signs ahead and

on the junction

• Retractable barriers system enabling to dynamically and physically recreate

a hard shoulder

After 2 years of operation, there is an obvious benefit on the project with the increase in road capacity on the A3/A86 junction itself, although the impact varies for sections of highways ahead and after the junction.

The equipment composing the Intelligent Transportation System demonstrated its ability to ensure an outstanding level of safety and security across the viaduct. The Video Detection system supplied efficient and reliable information enabling Traffic Operators to address quickly and adequately incidents occurring on the junction.

The project is an archetype of the benefits of ITS solutions for upgrading safety and providing congestion relief at a cost/benefit ratio far better than a conventional roadwork solution; it shows good potential to be implemented in a large number of other sites.

Citilog, Inc.

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas

The purpose of this paper is two fold: (1) to present an overarching evaluation framework to assess the efficiency and the cost effectiveness of advanced traffic signal control systems that can provide emergency vehicle preemption and transit priority capabilities; (2) to present two parts of a four-part analytical approach within this framework that assess: (a) the impact of reduced emergency vehicle crashes on fire and rescue operation and maintenance costs; and (b) the impact of reduced transit travel time on transit operating and maintenance costs. This methodology is intended to assist traffic managers, fire and rescue providers, planners, engineers and other professionals in evaluating the impacts of integrated emergency vehicle preemption and transit priority systems. Initial results indicate: (1) that emergency vehicle preemption has the potential to reduce fire and rescue operational and maintenance costs; and, (2) that the values for both efficiency and cost effectiveness of the adopted transit priority strategies and preferential treatment solutions are a function of many variables, such as: the magnitude of transit travel time delay; the transit fleet size, the labor rules; the apportionment of preemption and priority system costs among transit operators, emergency service providers and the municipality; and the cost of money.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas

Conventional Cruise Control (CCC) systems are present on most production vehicles today that simply hold a vehicle at a preset speed. This relieves the driver of this task, making the overall driving task easier, more enjoyable and less fatiguing. However, CCC systems are only useful for holding steady speeds and when the appropriate vehicle speed is not influenced by the actions of other vehicles. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) normally acts like a CCC, but has sensors that detect the range and relative speed of a vehicle ahead, matching speed with that vehiclewhen necessary.  Generally the places where CCC and ACC do not work are the most challenging and dangerous driving situations where drivers have several tasks to manage at the same time. This is both unpleasant for the driver and dangerous. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) systems address this limitation by using vehicle computers and digital vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication to hold a vehicle speed determined through a cooperative process between a vehicle and its neighbors.  
Experimental CACC systems have been simulated and implemented for automated highways for the support of platoons. This report discusses a CACC implemented as an emulator and installed as a user defined driver model in the traffic micro-simulation code VISSIM. The CACC emulator is designed to take over vehicle speed control when the vehicle enters a critical zone, which in this case is either a weave or a merge zone. VISSIM simulates a roadway with traffic and measures mobility and traffic density through the critical zone. Mobility of vehicles under  control of the CACC emulator is compared with the mobility of vehicles under the control of VISSIM's driver model to demonstrate the effect of the CACC emulator on mobility. VISSIM is also used to record headway time through the critical zone as a measure of safety and following stability.

Ford Motor Company

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas