Olufowobi Oluwaseun, Ivan John, Wang Kai, Eluru Naveen
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs CT, USA.
Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs CT, USA.
Accid Anal Prev. 2025 Aug;218:108078. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2025.108078. Epub 2025 May 5.
The increasing rate of crashes globally has prompted the development of strategies like the Advanced Driver Assistance systems (ADAS) to improve safety. These systems range from subtle speed adjustment alerts to automatic emergency braking. One such system is the forward collision warning (FCW), which aims to mitigate collisions, particularly rear-end crashes, by providing visual, auditory, or tactile alerts of impending collisions. However, there has not been enough attention given to how drivers might react to FCW without unintentionally distracting them, while also using serious conflicts to quantify safety. This driving simulation study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the FCW by examining serious conflict as a surrogate measure for actual crashes. The goal was to estimate a Crash Modification Factor (CMF) for FCW systems within vehicle fleet, considering varying market penetration rates ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent in increments of 10 percent. Scenarios were created where drivers encountered different road and traffic conditions to evaluate their responses to unexpected events. A total of 133 participants completed a between subject design in which half of them drove the course with the FCW programmed into the simulation, and the other half did not have the FCW. The evaluation of serious conflicts utilized the Swedish Traffic Conflict Technique, employing two key indicators: Time to Accident (TA) and Conflicting Speed. Conflict severity was measured by considering two variables - the lane position and speed of the participants which was used to compute the TA. As expected, drivers in each scenario experienced fewer serious conflicts when assisted by FCW systems compared to the drivers without them. The resulting CMFs from the study can be integrated into crash prediction models to support efforts to keep crash prediction models up to date by accounting for the effects of increasing numbers of vehicles having FCW systems.
全球撞车事故发生率的不断上升促使了先进驾驶辅助系统（ADAS）等安全策略的发展。这些系统涵盖了从细微的速度调整警报到自动紧急制动等多种功能。其中一种系统是前方碰撞预警（FCW），其旨在通过提供即将发生碰撞的视觉、听觉或触觉警报来减轻碰撞，尤其是追尾事故。然而，对于驾驶员在不被无意分散注意力的情况下对FCW的反应方式，以及如何利用严重冲突来量化安全性，尚未给予足够的关注。这项驾驶模拟研究旨在通过将严重冲突作为实际撞车事故的替代指标来评估FCW的有效性。目标是针对车队中的FCW系统估计碰撞修正因子（CMF），考虑市场渗透率从10%到50%，以10%的增量变化。创建了驾驶员遇到不同道路和交通状况的场景，以评估他们对意外事件的反应。共有133名参与者完成了一项被试间设计，其中一半人在模拟中驾驶配备FCW的路线，另一半人则没有FCW。对严重冲突的评估采用了瑞典交通冲突技术，使用两个关键指标：事故时间（TA）和冲突速度。通过考虑参与者的车道位置和速度这两个变量来测量冲突严重程度，这两个变量用于计算TA。正如预期的那样，与没有FCW系统辅助的驾驶员相比，在每个场景中，配备FCW系统辅助的驾驶员经历的严重冲突更少。该研究得出的CMF可整合到撞车预测模型中，以支持通过考虑越来越多车辆配备FCW系统的影响来使撞车预测模型保持最新状态的工作。
