researc h h i g h l i ght
Driver Behaviour in Connected Vehicles Effect of Connected Cruise Control Equipped Vehicles on Traffic Operation and Safety BY IYAD SAHNOON UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Background Existing road transport systems both in Canada and worldwide face operational, safety, and environmental challenges. Congestion reduces the quality of life for Canadians and has a high environmental and economic cost to governments and society. With increasing urban sprawl, traffic flow can be improved by increasing road capacity to accommodate more vehicles through the building of new highways and/ or additional lanes. However, providing more unmanaged road capacity does not guarantee the dissolution of the problems. More sustainable and smart approaches are needed to alleviate these problems by utilizing available technology to propose more efficient treatments. Connected vehicles (CV) are emerging as the next wave of technology in our transportation system to further support drivers’ decisions with in-advance information. CV technology has many promising applications that can improve road operation and safety levels. In fact, we need to continuously understand motorists’ driving interactions with CV, as they will share the road with human-driven vehicles.
31 TRANSPORTATION TALK | WINTER 2020-2021
CV supplemented with advanced driver support systems could keep the motorists aware of surrounding road conditions as well as support part of their driving tasks. Adaptive cruise control (ACC) has been proposed as a solution to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front. However, ACC has not been found to be largely effective in mitigating speed fluctuations propagating upstream in the traffic flow as it only responds to its immediate predecessor (Barber et al., 2009). Thus, Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) was developed to overcome this limitation and provide some automation in the driving. Research has shown that CACC benefits will be more obvious if all vehicles in a platoon are equipped and that the process depends on the platoon’s leader. Connected cruise control (CCC) was then found to be a cooperative technology to fill this gap. CCC is an advanced CACC, which receives information from vehicles that are beyond our direct line of sight (Shladover et al., 2015). It can be used as a driver assistance system to warn drivers about different road information to proactively act and prevent undesired events. Moreover, CCC does not require a fixed communication structure or a designated leader.
