Citation

LeBlanc D, Bao S, Sayer J, Bogard S. Transp. Res. Rec. 2013; 2365: 17-21.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.3141/2365-03

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study created the most extensive set of naturalistic data that has ever been gathered on the following behavior of drivers when interacting with a forward crash-warning system. For the purposes of this paper, data from the naturalistic driving study of the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety System (IVBSS) program were used. IVBSS data collected from a total of 108 drivers, representing 81,163 steady state following events and 20,096 forward conflict events were extracted and compared. Drivers were from three age groups (younger, middle-aged, and older) and balanced between two gender groups. Three objective measures were used in this study: mean time headway, minimum time to collision, and proportion of time drivers spent in time headway of 1s or less. Drivers used the research vehicles for 40 days, with the system not activated for the first 12 days and activated for the following 28 days. A linear mixed model was used for the data analysis.

RESULTS of this study show that drivers have a tendency to follow more closely when the warning system is activated. It is recommended that a visual display for feedback on real-time safe following distance may help drivers keep a safer distance. This study also observed age-related self-regulation behavior when other vehicles were being followed and showed that older drivers tended to follow farther away from the leading vehicle.