Abstract
The collision avoidance warning system is an emerging technology designed to assist drivers in avoiding red-light running (RLR) collisions at intersections. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of auditory warning information on collision avoidance behaviors in the RLR pre-crash scenarios and further to examine the casual relationships among the relevant factors. A driving-simulator-based experiment was designed and conducted with 50 participants. The data from the experiments were analyzed by approaches of ANOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM). The collisions avoidance related variables were measured in terms of brake reaction time (BRT), maximum deceleration and lane deviation in this study. It was found that the collision avoidance warning system can result in smaller collision rates compared to the without-warning condition and lead to shorter reaction times, larger maximum deceleration and less lane deviation. Furthermore, the SEM analysis illustrate that the audio warning information in fact has both direct and indirect effect on occurrence of collisions, and the indirect effect plays a more important role on collision avoidance than the direct effect. Essentially, the auditory warning information can assist drivers in detecting the RLR vehicles in a timely manner, thus providing drivers more adequate time and space to decelerate to avoid collisions with the conflicting vehicles.
Highlights
With the rapid growth of the number of passenger cars, traffic safety-related issues have attracted worldwide attention
Logistic regression analysis is applied to investigate the impacts of independent variables on outcome of collision avoidance, and the hypothesis testing of the coefficients was based on a 0.05 significance level
This study focused on audio warning information which is delivered to remind drivers who are approaching intersections during the green phase to be alert to conflicting illegal red-light running (RLR) vehicles
Summary
With the rapid growth of the number of passenger cars, traffic safety-related issues have attracted worldwide attention. In 2001 a goal for reducing road accidents was set up by European countries [1]. Among all types of traffic accidents, red-light running (RLR) has been identified as a major cause of crashes occurring at intersections, and it was estimated to account for 20% of all accidents [2]. The severity level of accidents caused by RLR seems to be higher [3]. Retting et al [4] found that the injury rate of drivers in RLR accidents is 47%, whereas the rate in other types of accidents is only 33%. The RLR collisions typically occur between legal vehicles traveling during the green light phase and the illegal RLR vehicles unexpectedly crossing the intersections from the conflict directions
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
