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Safety evaluation of connected vehicle applications using micro-simulation

University of British Columbia

Connected vehicles are on the cutting edge of automotive technology with applications expected to improve mobility and safety. Several studies have evaluated the mobility benefits of connected vehicle technology but there is little research on its impact on safety. The first objective of this study is to investigate the ability to evaluate the safety of a connected vehicle applications using surrogate safety measures through a combination of the micro-simulation model VISSIM and the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM). Two connected vehicle applications are reviewed, considering two types of connected vehicle communications, specifically Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure. The two applications are a cumulative travel time (CTT) intersection control algorithm connected vehicle environment, and a cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) application, facilitating vehicle platooning on a freeway. The CACC study investigates the improvement to the freeway segment through a simulated incident. The CTT study investigates the impacts of calibrating the micro-simulation model using real-world vehicle trajectory and conflict data. The CTT algorithm is applied to a signalized intersection and evaluated under three calibration scenarios: uncalibrated, first step calibrated for desired speed and vehicle arrival types, and second step calibrated for conflicts observed in the field. In both studies, a comparison of safety based on the number of conflicts at different time-to-collision thresholds is provided for the varying scenarios. Results show that the combination of VISSIM and SSAM provide an appropriate tool to use in the evaluation of changes in the level of safety of connected vehicle applications, specifically the CACC application and the CTT intersection control application. Calibration of the micro-simulation model has a significant impact on the results of the safety evaluation. However, it is inconclusive whether the results are realistic with the lack of a real-world connected vehicle implementation.

Text

2017-01-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/59955

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/