01122767

Component

The human factor is a major contributor in road traffic crashes, while road conditions and vehicle performance are the other two main contributing factors. This paper reports a study conducted recently to investigate human driving behavior under icy and slippery road conditions. Extensive car-following experiments were conducted on a test track using four vehicles each equipped with RTK GPS receivers. This is the first time such experiments were conducted on icy and slippery road surface, replicating various uninterrupted driving conditions in a winter season. Eight different speed patterns were tested for the lead vehicle that included four sinusoidal, three constant and one random speed pattern, representing various levels of disturbance in the traffic flow. The responses of the following drivers were analyzed based on three important human driving performance indicators namely perception response time, sensitivity factor and stability factor. The average values for the perception response time recorded in this study were higher than those recorded earlier under dry road conditions while the average values for the sensitivity factor were very much similar to dry conditions. The influence of speed patterns on the perception response time and the sensitivity factor was not significant statistically. However, the drivers’ position in the platoon might have some influence on them. The average responses of drivers were found to be stable locally with damped oscillations but unstable asymptotically.

01120148

09-2648

English

20p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (5) ; Photos (1) ; References (27) ; Tables (5)

Automobile drivers; Car following; Human factors; Icy roads; Reaction time; Sensitivity analysis; Speed; Stability analysis; Tailgating; Traffic crashes; Winter

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-2648

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 7:00PM