Unravelling the Impacts of Parameters on Surrogate Safety Measures for a Mixed Platoon

Fan Ding, Jiwan Jiang, Yang Zhou, Ran Yi and Huachun Tan
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Fan Ding: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Jiwan Jiang: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Yang Zhou: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Ran Yi: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Huachun Tan: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 23, 1-17

Abstract: With the precedence of connected automated vehicles (CAVs), car-following control technology is a promising way to enhance traffic safety. Although a variety of research has been conducted to analyze the safety enhancement by CAV technology, the parametric impact on CAV technology has not been systematically explored. Hence, this paper analyzes the parametric impacts on surrogate safety measures (SSMs) for a mixed vehicular platoon via a two-level analysis structure. To construct the active safety evaluation framework, numerical simulations were constructed which can generate trajectories for different kind of vehicles while considering communication and vehicle dynamics characteristics. Based on the trajectories, we analyzed parametric impacts upon active safety on two different levels. On the microscopic level, parameters including controller dynamic characteristics and equilibrium time headway of car-following policies were analyzed, which aimed to capture local and aggregated driving behavior’s impact on the vehicle. On the macroscopic level, parameters incorporating market penetration rate (MPR), vehicle topology, and vehicle-to-vehicle environment were extensively investigated to evaluate their impacts on aggregated platoon level safety caused by inter-drivers’ behavioral differences. As indicated by simulation results, an automated vehicle (AV) suffering from degradation is a potentially unsafe component in platoon, due to the loss of a feedforward control mechanism. Hence, the introduction of connected automated vehicles (CAVs) only start showing benefits to platoon safety from about 20% CAV MPR in this study. Furthermore, the analysis on vehicle platoon topology suggests that arranging all CAVs at the front of a mixed platoon assists in enhancing platoon SSM performances.

Keywords: active safety; car-following; rear-end crash risk; partially connected automated environment; string stability; surrogate safety measure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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