Abstract
For a smooth, safe and comfortable cooperation of all actors in traffic good communication is essential. In view of the progressing automation in traffic the impacts on communication have to be considered. This paper puts a special focus on car automation's impact on the communication between road users including interaction between highly automated vehicles and vulnerable road users (VRUs). The main research objective was to develop relevant assumptions concerning changing conditions of communication. To reach this objective, interviews with experts were carried out. The results show that various developments between the two poles - (1) implementation controlled by certain societal strategies or (2) implementation that just takes its course - are considered possible. Enhanced automation could lead to the decrease in the use of interpersonal communication while the use of digital communication gains the upper hand. Such a development, on the one hand is seen as a chance for the improvement of traffic safety and efficiency. On the other hand, interviewed experts also identify risks such as misunderstandings between VRUs and automated cars, with fatal outcomes, or reductions in traffic flow. This is expected to be the case especially during the transition phase where vehicles with different degrees of automation are on the road and where many road users outside vehicles move about, e.g. in densely inhabited areas, where ~70% of the citizens in industrial countries live nowadays.
Highlights
INTRODUCTION & GOALFrom 1987 to 1995 the Eureka PROMETHEUS Project (PROgraMme for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety, 1987-1995), the largest Research and Development programme ever in the field of driver assistance (ADAS – Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) paving the way to automation of certain features of driving (Eureka 20; see Thrun 2010) defined the state of the art of such automation
The anticipated problems were similar to the problems nowadays: *) in regard to new technologies there usually exist only few accident data (e.g. Maki & Sage 2018); *) nobody really knows how road users will interact with new systems; *) there is doubt whether traffic participants, mainly car drivers, will accept and use these innovations in the way that producers hope they will; *) it is unclear how interaction with the social environment will change
In the frame of our expert interviews many relevant aspects were gathered that later on should be analysed with the help of additional qualitative studies – focus group interviews with road users and behaviour observations at selected spots in the road network - that should provide different perspectives and contribute to the list of potentially important issues concerning the relation between automation and communication
Summary
INTRODUCTION & GOALFrom 1987 to 1995 the Eureka PROMETHEUS Project (PROgraMme for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety, 1987-1995), the largest Research and Development programme ever in the field of driver assistance (ADAS – Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) paving the way to automation of certain features of driving (Eureka 20; see Thrun 2010) defined the state of the art of such automation, . No matter whether the character of changes in traffic and especially of driving that were expected at that time are the same or somewhat different from today, the fact remains that drivers will have to interact much more with technical systems, and in a much different way, which with high probability will affect communication with other road users. Behaviour is steered much by one’s own perception and judgement and one’s own assessment of what is safe, and by informal behavioural norms. Seen from this perspective, how will drivers react to new and much more intrusive sys-
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