Analysis of volatility in driving regimes extracted from basic safety messages transmitted between connected vehicles

Driving volatility captures the extent of speed variations when a vehicle is being driven. Extreme longitudinal variations signify hard acceleration or braking. Warnings and alerts given to drivers can reduce such volatility potentially improving safety, energy use, and emissions. This study develops a fundamental understanding of instantaneous driving decisions, needed for hazard anticipation and notification systems, and distinguishes normal from anomalous driving. In this study, driving task is divided into distinct yet unobserved regimes. The research issue is to characterize and quantify these regimes in typical driving cycles and the associated volatility of each regime, explore when the regimes change and the key correlates associated with each regime. Using Basic Safety Message (BSM) data from the Safety Pilot Model Deployment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, two- and three-regime Dynamic Markov switching models are estimated for several trips undertaken on various roadway types. While thousands of instrumented vehicles with vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication systems are being tested, nearly 1.4 million records of BSMs, from 184 trips undertaken by 71 instrumented vehicles are analyzed in this study. Then even more detailed analysis of 43 randomly chosen trips (N = 714,340 BSM records) that were undertaken on various roadway types is conducted. The results indicate that acceleration and deceleration are two distinct regimes, and as compared to acceleration, drivers decelerate at higher rates, and braking is significantly more volatile than acceleration. Different correlations of the two regimes with instantaneous driving contexts are explored. With a more generic three-regime model specification, the results reveal high-rate acceleration, high-rate deceleration, and cruise/constant as the three distinct regimes that characterize a typical driving cycle. Moreover, given in a high-rate regime, drivers’ on-average tend to decelerate at a higher rate than their rate of acceleration. Importantly, compared to cruise/constant regime, drivers’ instantaneous driving decisions are more volatile both in “high-rate” acceleration as well as “high-rate” deceleration regime. The study contributes to analyzing volatility in short-term driving decisions, and how changes in driving regimes can be mapped to a combination of local traffic states surrounding the vehicle.     

河北省内河水上交通安全管理探析

河北省内河许多水域安全基础设施简陋,缺乏必要的安全保障措施,已严重影响水上交通安全管理工作的正常进行．进而在一定程度上制约地方经济发展。通过对当前河北省内河水上交通安全现状的研究,系统分析我省内河水上交通安全管理的特点。并在法制法规、资金筹措、制度建设等方面提出观点和建议。     

简述信息化管理在交通工程安全管理中的应用

交通工程安全管理工作开展时,为全面提升交通工程安全管理水平与效能,应当合理应用信息化管理技术,建构现代化交通工程安全管理体系与模式,不断推动我国交通事业高质量发展.本文就信息化管理在交通工程安全管理工作中的实际应用进行分析探讨.     

Collision course? The North Airfield Safety Study at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

The LAX North Airfield Safety Study was undertaken by an Academic Panel consisting of the present authors, and was based in large part on a simulation that was conducted at FutureFlight Central at NASA Ames Research Center. The primary aim of the study was “to estimate as specifically as possible the level of future safety associated with several geometrical configurations of the LAX North Airfield.” This paper describes the study, and how it combined information from human-in-the-loop simulations at NASA with historical data from LAX and other US airports about runway incursions and collisions. The analysis indicated that, even under its existing physical layout, LAX North would experience very low risk of runway collisions at traffic levels projected for 2020. That risk could be reduced by about half if the North Airfield runways were reconfigured, and some reconfigurations would also add appreciably to the operational efficiency of the airport. But because the “baseline” level of risk is so low, the Study concluded that “it would be difficult to construct a compelling case on safety grounds alone for reconfiguring the North Airfield.”     

Do people drive safer when accidents are more expensive: Testing for moral hazard in experience rating schemes

Using individual policies and claims data from the Croatian mandatory motor insurance we test the theoretical proposition that under moral hazard, experience rated pricing scheme should generate the negative state dependence in claims, i.e. that drivers should drive more safely after they had an accident. The empirical challenge in these tests is to disentangle the state dependence from unobserved heterogeneity. We propose a simple approach based on the explicit reliance on the cost of future accidents function which is used to filter out the pure incentives effect, whereas the bonus-malus scale is used to control for pure heterogeneity. Our results confirm the existence of negative dependence in claims indicating the presence of significant moral hazard effect. Increasing a 3-year cost of having an accident by approximately US$20 decreases the probability of having an accident by 6.5%.     

Extending Time to Collision for probabilistic reasoning in general traffic scenarios

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems allow vehicles to share state information with one another to improve safety and efficiency of transportation networks. One of the key applications of such a system is in the prediction and avoidance of collisions between vehicles. If a method to do this is to succeed it must be robust to measurement uncertainty and to loss of communication links. The method should also be general enough that it does not rely on constraints on vehicle motion for the accuracy of its predictions. It should work for all interactions between vehicles and not just a select subset. This paper presents a method to calculate Time to Collision for unconstrained vehicle motion. This metric is gated using a novel technique based on relative vehicle motion that we call “looming”. Finally, these ideas are integrated into a probabilistic framework that accounts for uncertainty in vehicle state and loss of vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Together this work represents a new way of considering vehicle collision estimation. These algorithms are validated on data collected from real world vehicle trials.     

Point-to-point speed enforcement systems: Speed limits design criteria and analysis of drivers’ compliance

Point-to-point (P2P) speed enforcement is a relatively new approach to traffic law enforcement. Its technology allows vehicles whose average speed exceeds the speed limit over the controlled section to be fined. It therefore encourages compliance over distances longer than those where spot enforcement policies have been in place.In this paper, a procedure for consistently setting speed limits with such enforcement systems is proposed. Such a method has been applied to design the speed limits on two motorways in the district of Naples, Italy, where P2P enforcement systems became operational in 2009 and 2010. The speed limits, which were set using the Italian geometric design standard to assess vehicle stability and stopping sight distance, have been compared with those provided by using well-known international standards.The impact of the newly designed speed limits and of the P2P enforcement system on drivers’ speeding behaviour has been quantified for each highway section and vehicle type. In fact, accurate measurements of the average travel speeds of each vehicle crossing the enforced sections, before and after the activation of the system, were available. The migration from the old speed limits with spot speed enforcement to the new approach resulted in a notable increase in drivers’ compliance to the speed limits with a remarkable decrease in both the average of individual speeds and in their standard deviation.In addition, the analysis of 3 years of data shows that a gradual adaptation of drivers’ behaviour to the system took place. In particular, a decreasing compliance to the speed limits points to a non-optimal system management. Finally, the results of a revealed preference survey allowed us to make a behavioural interpretation regarding the significantly different impacts measured on the two motorways.     

道路环境对交通安全的影响及对策

交通安全,涉及到人、车以及道路和环境等很多因素。近年来,因为各种原因使得有关单位以及人员将更多的将精力放在人、车、道路这几个因素上,对道路交通环境没有过多的考虑和研究。深入研究道路交通环境,有利于道路交通的安全,文章通过对其的研究和分析,得出有关道路交通环境对交通安全的影响和解决措施,对于防止道路交通安全事故具有重要意义。同时为人们的生命财产的安全提供保障、对构建社会主义和谐社会具有很大帮助。     

城市轨道交通设施安全智能监测预警系统设计

城市轨道交通线网规模和客运量的日益增加对城市轨道交通安全运营的要求越来越高,城市轨道交通设施安全智能监测是轨道交通系统安全运营的重要保障.设计了一种城市轨道交通设施安全智能监测预警系统,实现轨道交通设施监测数据采集、数据传输、数据保存、智能预警功能,对系统功能及布局提出具体的设计要求,同时根据安全性的需求划分预警级别.     

山区公路交通安全保障措施模拟评价

以云南小磨路K109+600~K122+024路段上的隧道群、陡坡与混行路段为试验样本路段, 应用虚拟视景生成系统建立了路段三维静态与动态模型。在隧道内设置倒伏示警柱、视觉标线与常规标线3种中央隔离设施, 在爬坡路段与混行路段上均设置附加车道, 对比分析了3种路段上的平均车速与车辆平均横向位置, 并评价了3种安全保障措施的效果。分析结果表明: 在隧道内, 3种中央隔离设施下的平均车速标准差分别为9.74、10.01、10.40 km·h^-1, 车辆平均横向位置标准差分别为0.54、0.70、0.69 m, 说明设置倒伏示警柱后, 车辆保持较好车速和横向位置; 在爬坡路段上, 当交通流量不超过1 000 pcu·h^-1时, 设置附加车道有利于主线路车辆车速的提高; 在混行路段上, 当非机动车流量分别为500、800 pcu·h^-1时, 设置附加车道后, 车速增大, 车速标准差减小, 车辆横向位置变大, 说明设置附加车道有利于提高和稳定车速, 并可减少与对向车辆的冲突。