The Federal Highway Administration provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement. REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGEForm Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Volpe conducted the Naturalistic study of truck following behavior to gain a better understanding of how trucks follow other vehicles in the real world, with the ultimate goal of supporting the Federal Highway Administration in the development of automated truck platooning applications. Using two naturalistic heavy truck data sets collected from previous related research, Volpe quantified heavy truck following behavior in the following categories: how closely trucks follow other vehicles on freeways, how following behavior varies by road condition, weather and visibility, following distances at which cut-in events occur, and the safety impact of different headways. Key results from this 2015 study showed that trucks follow passenger cars at shorter distances and headways than they follow heavy trucks at distances under 60 mph, but follow other heavy vehicles at shorter distances and headways at speeds greater than 60 mph; truck drivers generally follow other vehicles at much shorter headways (around 2 seconds) than are recommended in CDL driver handbooks; vehicles rarely cut-in between two trucks who are following at a distance of 40 m or less; and crash risk increases considerably when trucks follow other vehicles at headways of less than 1 s.
This paper presents recent results of ongoing research to build new maps of driver performance in car-following situations. The novel performance map is comprised of four driving states: low risk, conflict, near crash, and crash imminent-which correspond to advisory warning, crash imminent warning, and crash mitigation countermeasures. The paper addresses two questions dealing with the approach to quantify the boundaries between the driving states: (1) Do the quantified boundaries strongly depend on the dynamic scenario encountered in the driving environment? and (2) Do the quantified boundaries vary between steering and braking driver responses? Specifically, braking and steering driver performances are examined in two car-following scenarios: lead vehicle stopped and lead vehicle moving at lower constant speed. The analysis was conducted on experimental data collected from test track studies to develop a fundamental understanding of drivers' lastsecond braking and steering performance. The results of last-second braking performance analysis showed that the quantified boundaries depend on the dynamic scenario. On the other hand, the quantified boundaries were independent of the specific dynamic scenario based on the analysis of last-second steering performance. Finally, the quantified boundaries varied between braking and steering responses since drivers initiated last-second braking maneuvers at generally longer distances than last-second steering maneuvers. STATE ESCALATION COUNTERMEASURES EXAMPLES OF POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS Low Risk Conflict Near Crash Crash Imminent Situational awareness decision aids Imminent crash warning Crash mitigation Lane change mirror icons, headway displays, road departure electronic rumble strips Rear-end crash warning
Forward collision warning (FCW) systems have been available for some time. Drivers 20-29 years of age are especially at risk for being involved in motor vehicle crashes due to distraction. (FCW) systems could potentially reduce rear-end crashes caused by distraction and other factors. A field operational experiment was run to determine whether FCW systems could reduce over time for this cohort the driving conflicts (rear-end crashes and near crashes) with lead vehicles. Information was gathered on 38 drivers over varying periods of time (up to a year) on alert rates [over vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or months], conflict rates, and responses to conflicts. Conflicts per 1,000 VMT decreased by 76.6%. The decrease in conflict rates was correlated with the decrease in alert rates (0.71), suggesting that drivers were responding positively to the alerts. There was no change in the responses to conflicts. Females had many fewer alerts than males.
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