Highway Driver Research Articles

Futures Market for Demand Responsive Travel Pricing

While transportation funding can be collected in a variety of direct (e.g., fares, tolls, and gas taxes) or indirect (e.g., property and sales tax) ways, dynamic demand responsive pricing not only collects revenue but also incentivizes travelers to avoid peak-demand periods, thus utilizing infrastructure capacity more efficiently. Unfortunately, the demand response to price changes, called the price elasticity of demand, is generally greater for longer-term travel planning (e.g., air and rail travel) than it is for more atomized short-term planning (e.g., highway tolls and transit fares). While this is caused by a plethora of factors (e.g., time flexibility, housing choice, automobile investment, etc.), a critical factor is that travelers simply lack sufficient information for future travel planning. For example, airline prices at different times can easily be compared, but a highway driver cannot accurately predict congestion nor congestion pricing. For this reason, such price changes have little effect on demand. This leaves any congestion abatement up to inefficient trial and error, and anecdotal speculation by travelers. Moreover, dynamic pricing is politically unsavory because of price uncertainty and collateral equity concerns. This article seeks to help remedy these concerns by proposing a simple “futures” market mechanism that can augment existing fare/toll collection technologies, providing travelers with sufficient pricing information and purchasing options to preplan their travel and avoid excessive prices. Users can optionally pre-pay their future fares/tolls to lock in a lower price for expected trips, thus encouraging good travel planning and efficient infrastructure utilization, while reducing price uncertainty.

Attributation Analysis of Reinforcement Learning-Based Highway Driver

While machine learning models are powering more and more everyday devices, there is a growing need for explaining them. This especially applies to the use of deep reinforcement learning in solutions that require security, such as vehicle motion planning. In this paper, we propose a method for understanding what the RL agent’s decision is based on. The method relies on conducting a statistical analysis on a massive set of state-decisions samples. It indicates which input features have an impact on the agent’s decision and the relationships between the decisions, the significance of the input features, and their values. The method allows us to determine whether the process of making a decision by the agent is coherent with human intuition and what contradicts it. We applied the proposed method to the RL motion planning agent which is supposed to drive a vehicle safely and efficiently on a highway. We find out that making such an analysis allows for a better understanding of the agent’s decisions, inspecting its behavior, debugging the ANN model, and verifying the correctness of the input values, which increases its credibility.

Airlines, Interstates, and the Creation of “Flyover Country” in the United States

This article considers the impact of cross-country air and interstate highway travel on changing conceptions of the land and regions of the United States. Focusing on air passenger and highway maps, promotional materials, and passenger and driver accounts from between the 1920s and the 1970s, it explores how airline and highway-based portraits transformed from highly detailed, if at times comical, representations of the nation's land and people to increasingly simplified and schematized visions of mere lines across space. These changes encouraged a steady erasure of formerly conceived regions and a growing imagining of the great center of the United States as “flyover country,” a place that needed to be quickly traversed to get to somewhere that actually matters.

The Effectiveness of Driver Education and Information Programs in the State of Nevada

According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, pedestrian and driver crashes are increasing at an alarming rate due to technological advancements and human errors. There is a need to improve existing driver education programs to mitigate the chances of crashes. The objectives of this research were 1) to examine the quality of Nevada’s driver education by evaluating the effectiveness of its programs, and 2) to provide recommendations to improve driving education in Nevada based on the results from this study. Two different surveys were conducted in Clark County, Southern Nevada. The first survey focused on assessing the strengths and limitations of the current Driver Education Programs in Nevada by capturing the opinions and attitudes of those who went through the process as teenagers. The second survey focused on driver safety through the involvement of pedestrians on the road. These surveys and the corresponding statistical analysis as well as the exiting literature have provided insights to improve driving education. The corresponding recommendations were organized into seven major categories: 1) lack of rigor of online driver education, 2) interactive learning and technology, 3) follow-up exams, 4) practice/training at home, 5) collecting information about crashes, 6) pedestrians, and 7) additional emphasis. Finally, due to the dangers of driving distractions (texting and calling on the cell phone) and impairments (driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs), more emphasis on these topics—as well as more public announcements through billboards, television commercials, and magazines— can help to constantly remind drivers about having good driving habits.

Minimum Roadside Clearance Offsets on the Inside of Reverse Curves Based on Flat Spirals

Design guidelines require that high objects on the inside of horizontal curves be cleared so as to provide sufficient sight distance. An example of the guidelines that require such clearance is the AASHTO’s Green Book. The Green Book has an analytical model for determining minimum clearance for a given design sight distance. The model is well suited for middle sections of long curves. Applying such clearance to sections near beginnings and ends of the curves and to sections where there is reverse of curvature will result in over-clearance. Over-clearance implies extra cost of earthwork where highways pass in cut zones. To avoid such extra costs the guideline suggests using the graphical method to determine exact clearance offsets. The graphical method is accurate but it is also tedious and time consuming. This study developed analytical models for efficiently determining clearance offsets that match the offsets determined with the graphical method. The offsets are ordinates from driver paths to flat roadside spirals that make the boundary of the roadside area to clear. Mathematical equations for the spirals comprise of terms related to highway speed (in the form of design sight distance), curve features, and driver locations. In turn, these terms define magnitudes of the offsets to the spirals. Combination of the terms results in many parameters to the extent of making difficult development of design charts for offsets. However, examining suitability of published offset charts for simple curves as estimates of offsets for sites with reverse curves leads to finding that the charts are suitable as long as the reverse curves have common tangents that are at least as long as 25% of design sight distance. For reverse curves with no common tangents, offset charts have been developed and presented in this paper. Practitioners can use these charts or the derived equations to determine clearance offsets for new sites as well as for existing sites that are deficient in design sight distance.

Monocular Vision Distance Measurement Method Based on Dynamic Error Compensation

On the basis of a cost-effective embedded system, this paper gives a preceding vehicle distance measuring method with monocular vision techniques for highway driver assistance system. The road scenes are acquired with a monocular camera calibrated beforehand. The features of the road lanes are extracted and recognized, and then the external parameters of the camera are calibrated by three mutually non-coincident parallel lines constructed by road lanes which have same vanishing point and different slopes on imaging plane. To compensate the error of the distance estimation caused by pitch angle, the data regression modeling method is applied, which is based on calibrating some fixed distances to image pixel samples under different pitch angles accurately. Distance of the preceding vehicle is compensated dynamically by the data regression modeling. A statistical base of 200 video highway road images in the daytime is tested in our experiments. The experimental results show that the distance estimation error ratio is lower than 5%.

Severity of Injuries to Motor Vehicle Drivers at Highway–Rail Grade Crossings in the United States

There are approximately 240,000 highway–rail grade crossings in the United States. High crash frequencies at these locations have led to continued research in safety modeling. Existing crash models for highway–rail grade crossings can be classified into two categories: models for predicting accident frequency and models of the severity of driver injuries. The majority of these studies have focused on the first category. Few studies have focused on the severity of injuries to motor vehicle drivers at highway–rail grade crossings. The objective of this study was to determine the contributing factors that influence the severity of driver injuries in accidents at highway–rail grade crossings. Probit models showed that the following factors were significant: whether the crash occurred during the peak hour, weather, visibility, vehicle type, vehicle speed, annual average daily traffic, train speed, driver age and gender, area type, and type of highway pavement. A marginal effects analysis was also conducted to quantitatively interpret the marginal effects of the contributing factors on each severity level for the highway driver.

Highway drivers' willingness to pay for speeding violations in Taiwan

SUMMARYThis study investigates the effects of various factors on highway drivers' speeding behaviour and estimates the amount of money that a highway driver is willing to pay for speeding violations in Taiwan. The contingent valuation method is applied to measure drivers' preference and to derive the value function of the amount of money. Logit and probit models are estimated to analyse the significant variables influencing speeding behaviour and to calculate the willingness to pay for speeding violations. The research results show that increasing speeding fines is an effective way to reduce illegal driving behaviour on highways. Significant variables affecting highway drivers' speeding behaviour include gender, engine capacity, past offenders in the previous year, and the risk‐seeking characteristics of drivers. Finally, the logit and probit models show that the amounts of money that highway drivers are willing to pay for speeding violations are $US119 and $US116, respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A regionalised strategy for improving motor vehicle-related highway driver deaths using a weighted averages method

ObjectiveThe state of Florida has some of the most dangerous highways in the USA. In 2006, Florida averaged 1.65 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles travelled (VMT) compared with the...

Development of workstation-based CAMAC data acquisition system for JT-60 data processing system

Data processing system for JT-60 is constructed by mini-computers, microcomputers and CAMACs for the control and the data acquisition of plasma diagnostics. However, it is difficult to apply this system to the remote diagnostics using the internet, because the old microcomputers used for over 15 years has no internet connectivity. Therefore, the data processing subsystem using mini-computers and microcomputers should be replaced, keeping the consistency with the main computer. The workstation based on UNIX-OS is a useful candidate for replacing those computers, since it is excellent in the network communication, the cost and the stability. We therefore the replaced microcomputers controlled and monitored the diagnostic CAMAC system, and executed its data acquisition. The new workstation-based system was simple system, which consisted of the serial highway driver module for controlling CAMAC and CPU module with SPARC CPU in VMEbus. By these replacements, the difficulty in the remote control has been solved by using the network and screen control of X Window. The maintainability is also improved and the function enhancement becomes easier. In this paper, basic design for replacing mini-computer and microcomputer with the UNIX workstation will be described.

Corba technology in reengineering the FTU data acquisition system

In its early stages, Frascati tokamak upgrade DAS was essentially devoted to acquiring data from experiments in CAMAC standard, using a software system (code and database) entirely written by domestic professionals. In 15 years of life DAS has been growing in size and complexity, still preserving its original structure; at the same time new standards were introduced (VME, PCI) to take into account users’ ever increasing demands for amount of data and acquisition frequency with which the existing code couldn't cope. Moreover, machines were getting old and the maintenance became troublesome. Finally, the data archive porting to Unix has definitely shown that the DAS system was ageing and a thorough redesign was needed. The system we are planning to introduce is founded on a standard corba bus: (i) to integrate heterogeneous platforms and define a standard layer for interactions between the different acquisition units; (ii)to grant, with open source tools (MySql) and interfaces (Html and Java), unified access to hardware and software configuration data. So, a dedicated PC server, connected via a suitable PCI serial highway driver card, will perform the CAMAC access for all the clients interacting through the corba layer. Up to now we have successfully tested CAMAC access, and we designed an acquisition unit, which will be the building block of the new system. The next step will be migrating to Alpha/VMS the software related to CAMAC data acquisition, which has been so far the cornerstone of the whole DAS; it will be completely redesigned to fit the ‘acquisition unit’ paradigm we have defined. Finally we will have a fully distributed data acquisition system with VME (at present six such units have been operating since 1999) and PCI stations, an Alpha/VMS client of the CAMAC/PC server and any possible platform interacting through a corba bus for getting data configuration, synchronisation and data archiving.

Recent changes of JT-60 data processing system

The JT-60 data processing system is a large computer complex, gradually being modernized by utilizing progressing computer and network technologies. There were three major changes in our system recently. A VME-based fast data acquisition system (FDS) has been developed to enlarge a transient mass-data storage system (TMDS). It can acquire the data of 6 MB per channel with 1 or 5 μs sampling. Now there are three FDSs with 29 channels. The TMDS, which was composed of a mini-computer and 61 channels of 6 MB memory modules with 5-μs sampling, has been replaced with a new system based on the technology of the VME-based fast data acquisition system. One of the outdated auxiliary crate controllers with micro-processor (ACM), which controls CAMAC modules in the crate on the serial highway, acquires data from them and transfers data to the main computer, has been replaced by a workstation with a VMEbus byte-serial highway driver. The combination of a workstation and a VMEbus byte-serial highway driver has been developed and used to replace many mini-computers in our system. A workstation with a digital linear tape (DLT) library has been introduced as final data storage. The conversion of a few terabytes of raw data tapes for a cartridge tape library (CTL), which is attached to a mainframe computer, Fujitsu GS8300, will be started by using data conversion software prepared to handle mainframe data on the workstation.

New High-Performance Computer Interfaces to CAMAC

Data acquisition and control systems have often included the need for high throughput between the front-end hardware and the host computer. This is particularly true in the aerospace/defense and experimental physics fields. With the advent of more sophisticated I/O hardware and faster host computers with larger memories, the need for higher performance real-time computer interfaces has increased dramatically. A family of CAMAC-based interface products has been developed that supports high data throughput while providing the flexibility to meet the particular application. These new products fall into three basic categories: enhancements to the CAMAC Serial Highway, new CAMAC crate controllers, and software drivers. The Serial Highway enhancements provide at least a five-fold improvement in effective throughput and rival the Parallel Branch Highway in that regard. A new crate controller with a ribbon-cable bus interface uses balanced-line transmission and supports a bus length to 500 feet. List processing is provided as a hardware option for the Serial Highway Driver and is supported by a list sequencer module, an auxiliary crate controller, as well as software device drivers. This paper describes these new products, details their performance, and recommends trade-offs for their application. Benchmark comparisons indicate the extremely high data throughput that has been obtained. With certain configurations, Serial Highway throughput approaching three megabytes per second can be achieved.

Controls and data acquisition for the NRL modified betatron accelerator

A CAMAC based data acquisition and control system (DACS) has been developed for the NRL modified betatron accelerator. The design goal of the MBA is to accelerate single-shot multi-kA currents of electrons to 50 MeV. The DACS must perform three general tasks: (1) the control and shot sequencing of the accelerator, (2) the data acquisition of MBA shot data and (3) the archiving of the shot conditions, shot digitizer data, and oscilloscope data. A VAX 11 750 controlled system crate contains a serial highway driver that communicates with CAMAC crates in three remote locations via fiberoptic links. The DACS utilizes sensing and feedback to control capacitor banks, high vacuum pumping systems, high speed digitizers and the precision infector accelerator during shot sequencing. A control program written at NRL invokes CAMAC functions to perform shot sequencing, provide data acquisition, and archiving. The computer actuates switches that control equipment subsystems by operating relay logic and interlocking. Thus, the computer control functions in parallel with manual controls. The DACS logs the conditions before and after MBA shots. It also archives data acquired form the buffer memories of transient digitizers and from a PDP 11 23 controlled vidicon camera that digitizes oscilloscope photographs.

Data Acquisition System Design for Production Measurements of Magnets for the Fermilab Anti-Proton Source

A semi-automatic measurement system has been constructed and operated for measurement of more than 400 magnets for the Fermilab Anti-Proton Source Project. A single VAX 11/730 computer with a serial CAMAC highway driver supports multiple measurement stations. Independence of the measurement stations is provided at the system level. Modern software design structures are implemented using standard modules whenever possible including (especially) commercial packages. Measurement results are obtained for evaluation at the time of the measurement. Convenience and accuracy of measurer interaction is provided using a forms entry system. For convenience of data analysis, a query-based data management tool accesses data bases which describe both equipment and results. Results are shared over a DECnet network. The design is well suited for quality control, for laboratory equipment testing/repair and for experimental R & D in a shared-resource, shared-data environment.

Data Acquistion for a High Energy Physics Experiment Using a Parallel/Serial CAMAC Driver

The FNAL standard data acquisition and analysis system, MULTI, has been modified for use with the Jorway parallel/serial CAMAC highway driver. Results are presented on data acquisition rates using the parallel/serial driver. Also presented is the design of an experimental data acquisition sytem incorporating the JY411 parallel/serial driver to control a typical high energy physics experiment.

A High Speed CAMAC Differential Branch Highway Driver

A new CAMAC branch driver is described that incorporates several unusual features which combine to give reliable, high speed performance. These include balanced line driver/receivers, stored CAMAC command lists, 8 DMA channels, pseudo LAMS, hardware priority encoding of LAMS and hardware implemented Q controlled block transfers.

A light coupled stage in the Camac highway system

In circumstances where high tension can cause damage to digital circuits and where common mode sources can interfere with the Camac signals, a light coupled stage will be helpful. The highway driver here described has been in use since January 1972 and drives different crates located over distances of about 100 m from the computer. The coupling stage isolates against differences in common mode potentials and protects against sudden high potential pulses occuring on experimenter side. Port input and output are according to the Camac specifications.