Intellectual Challenges to Deployability of Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has become increasingly interested in identifying what it can do to facilitate the rapid deployment of advanced vehicle control and safety systems (AVCSSs) under its new Intelligent Vehicle Initiative. The primary topic areas in which the current state of knowledge is inadequate to support the development and evaluation of the effectiveness of AVCSSs are identified. These topics (quantification of driving hazards, quantitative description of traffic behavior, identification of driver responses to stimuli, determination of the influences of AVCSSs on driver behavior, prediction of market response to availability of AVCSSs, and identification of the effects of AVCSSs on traffic flow) represent the kinds of cross-cutting precompetitive research subjects that could provide the principal focus for DOT contributions to facilitating the eventual deployment of AVCSSs. The state of knowledge in these areas needs to be improved substantially before it will be possible to design safe and effective AVCSSs or to evaluate the relative value of different potential AVCSS solutions to transportation problems.