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Human-related factors are a crucial inducement of traffic accidents. Understanding the influence of freeway environments on the driving behavior and workload experienced by drivers has been demonstrated to be of primary importance for improving traffic safety. To study the effect of alignment, traffic flow, and sign information on drivers' mental workload and behavior, 16 scenarios were constructed using the orthogonal design method, and simulated driving experiments were carried out with 45 participants. During driving, indicators such as the mean and standard deviation of vehicle speed and lane departure were collected, and the NASA-TLX questionnaire was adopted to measure workload. Analysis of variance results indicated that the radius of the horizontal curve, gradient, flow, and sign information level have a significant influence on drivers' workload and speed keeping ability. In addition, the horizontal curve radius has a significant effect on lane keeping ability. The importance of safety influencing factors on driving workload and performance was quantitatively ranked by integrating the trend of Deng's correlation degree, comprehensive correlation degree, and similar correlation degree, whose weight was calculated using the entropy method. Traffic sign information was found to have the greatest impact on workload. In terms of driving performance, traffic volume has the greatest influence on the mean and standard deviation of vehicle speed, followed by the amount of sign information. Lane departure is most affected by the radius of the horizontal curve. These findings provide guidance for freeway traffic safety regulation, including workload control and road facility optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributions of measurements for detecting drowsy driving are determined by calculation parameters, which are directly related to the accuracy of drowsiness detection. The previous studies utilized the same Unified Calculation Parameters (UCPs) to compute each driver's measurements. However, since each driver has unique driving behavior characteristics, namely, driver fingerprinting, Individual Drivers' Best Calculation Parameters (IDBCPs) making measurements more discriminative for drowsiness are various. Regardless of the difference in driver fingerprinting among the drivers being tested, using UCPs instead of IDBCPs to compute measurements will limit the drowsiness-detection performance of the measurements and reduce drowsiness-detection accuracies at the individual driver level. Thus, this paper proposed a model to optimize calculation parameters of individual driver's measurements and to extract individual driver's measurements that effectively distinguish drowsy driving. Through real vehicle experiments, we collected naturalistic driving data and subjective drowsy levels evaluated by the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. Eight nonintrusive drowsiness-related measurements were calculated by double-layer sliding time windows. In the proposed model, we firstly applied the Wilcoxon test to analyze differences between measurements of the awake state and drowsy state, and constructed the fitness function reflecting the relationship between the calculation parameters and measurement's drowsiness-detection performance. Secondly, the genetic algorithms were used to optimize fitness functions to obtain measured IDBCPs. Finally, we selected measurements calculated by IDBCPs that can distinguish drowsy driving to constitute individual drivers' optimal drowsiness-detection measurement set. To verify the advantages of IDBCPs, the measurements calculated by UCPs and IDBCPs were, respectively, used to build driver-specific drowsiness-detection models: DF_U and DF_I based on the Fisher discriminant algorithm. The mean drowsiness-detection accuracies of DF_U and DF_I were, respectively, 85.25% and 91.06%. It indicated that IDBCPs could enhance measurements' drowsiness-detection performance and improve the drowsiness-detection accuracies. This paper contributed to the establishment of personalized drowsiness-detection models considering driver fingerprinting differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driver fatigue level was considered an accumulated result contributed by circadian rhythms, hours of sleep before driving, driving duration, and break time during driving. This article presents an investigation into the regression model between driver fatigue level and the above four time-related variables. With the cooperation of one commercial transportation company, a Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) was conducted, and NDS data from thirty-four middle-aged drivers were selected for analysis. With regard to the circadian rhythms, commercial drivers operated the vehicle and started driving at around 09:00, 14:00, and 21:00, respectively. Participants' time of sleep before driving is also surveyed, and a range from 4 to 7 hours was selected. The commercial driving route was the same for all participants. After getting the fatigue level of all participants using the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS), the discrete KSS data were converted into consecutive value, and curve fitting methods were adopted for modeling. In addition, a linear regression model was proposed to represent the relationship between accumulated fatigue level and the four time-related variables. Finally, the prediction model was verified by the driving performance measurement: standard deviation of lateral position. The results demonstrated that fatigue prediction results are significantly relevant to driving performance. In conclusion, the fatigue prediction model proposed in this study could be implemented to predict the risk driving period and the maximum consecutive driving time once the driving schedule is determined, and the fatigue driving behavior could be avoided or alleviated by optimizing the driving and break schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current studies on traffic crash prediction mainly focus on the crash frequency and crash severity of freeways or arterials. However, collision type for urban expressway crash is rarely considered. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of urban expressway systems in China in recent years, traffic safety problems have attracted more attention. In addition, the traffic characteristics are considered to be a potentially important predictor of traffic accidents; however, their impact on crashes has been controversial. Therefore, a crash frequency predicting model for urban expressway considering collision types is proposed in this study. The loop detector traffic data and historical crash data were aggregated based on the similarities of the traffic conditions 5 minutes before crash occurrence, among which crashes were divided by collision type (rear-end collision and side-impact collision). The impact of traffic characteristics along with weather variables as well as their interactions on crash frequency was modelled by using negative binomial regression model. The results indicated that the influence of traffic and weather factors on two collision types shared similar trend, but different level. For rear-end collisions, crash frequency increased with lower average speed and high traffic volume under low speed limit. And when the speed limit is high, higher average speed coupled with larger volume increases the probability of crash. Higher average speed and traffic volume increase the probability of side-impact collisions, without being affected by the speed limit. The findings of the present study could help to determine efficient safety countermeasures aimed at improving the safety performance of urban expressway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rollover accidents induced by severe maneuvers are very dangerous and mostly happen to vehicles with elevated center of gravity, such as heavy-duty trucks and pickup trucks. Unfortunately, it is hard for drivers of those vehicles to predict and prevent the trend of the maneuver-induced (untripped) rollover ahead of time. In this study, a lateral load transfer ratio which reflects the load distribution of left and right tires is used to indicate the rollover criticality. An antiroll controller is designed with smooth sliding mode control technique for vehicles, in which an active antiroll suspension is installed. A simplified second order roll dynamic model with additive sector bounded uncertainties is used for control design, followed by robust stability analysis. Combined with the vehicle dynamics simulation package TruckSim, MATLAB/Simulink is used for simulating experiment. The results show that the applied controller can improve the roll stability under some typical steering maneuvers, such as Fishhook and J-turn. This direct antiroll control method could be more effective for untripped rollover prevention when driver deceleration or steering is too late. It could also be extended to handle tripped rollovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes and factors involved in evacuation activities are associated with a variety of uncertainties, posing major challenges to evacuation planners. This study represents an attempt to employ inexact optimization techniques for addressing uncertainties in evacuation practices. In this study, an interval-parameter fuzzy evacuation management (IF-EM) model is developed for supporting environment-oriented evacuation management under uncertainty. Through IF-EM, uncertainties in the model's stipulations and coefficients which are expressed as fuzzy sets and interval numbers can be directly communicated into the optimization process, greatly enhancing the robustness of the optimization system. The model is then applied to a case study and solved through a two-step interactive algorithm. A number of evacuation schemes can be generated by adjusting decision variables within their solution intervals according to projected planning conditions, reflecting various decision policies and a compromise between system optimality and stability. The relationships among vehicle allocation pattern, evacuation time, system satisfaction level, and system reliability level can be effectively reflected, facilitating more in-depth analyses of interactions among system efficiency, environmental protection, and economic cost. Results from the case study suggest that the proposed IF-EM model is applicable to practical evacuation problems that are associated with uncertainties and complexities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the automated driving system has been known to be one of the most popular research topics of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent transportation system (ITS). The journey experience on automated vehicles and the intelligent automated driving system could be improved by individualization driving understanding. Although previous studies have proposed methods for driving styles understanding, the individualization driving classification has not been addressed thoroughly. Therefore, in this study, a supervised method is proposed to understand driving behavioral structure and the latent driving styles by incorporating the prior knowledge. Firstly, a novel method is established for driving behavioral encoding and raw driving data mining. Then, the Labeled Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LLDA) is proposed to understand the latent driving styles from individual driving with driving behaviors. Finally, the Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD) data are used to validate the performance of the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed model uncovers latent driving styles effectively and shows good agreement to real situations, which provides theoretical guidance on driving behavior recognition for better individual experience on automated driving vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the automated driving system has been known to be one of the most popular research topics of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent transportation system (ITS). The journey experience on automated vehicles and the intelligent automated driving system could be improved by individualization driving understanding. Although previous studies have proposed methods for driving styles understanding, the individualization driving classification has not been addressed thoroughly. Therefore, in this study, a supervised method is proposed to understand driving behavioral structure and the latent driving styles by incorporating the prior knowledge. Firstly, a novel method is established for driving behavioral encoding and raw driving data mining. Then, the Labeled Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LLDA) is proposed to understand the latent driving styles from individual driving with driving behaviors. Finally, the Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD) data are used to validate the performance of the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed model uncovers latent driving styles effectively and shows good agreement to real situations, which provides theoretical guidance on driving behavior recognition for better individual experience on automated driving vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the automated driving system has been known to be one of the most popular research topics of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent transportation system (ITS). The journey experience on automated vehicles and the intelligent automated driving system could be improved by individualization driving understanding. Although previous studies have proposed methods for driving styles understanding, the individualization driving classification has not been addressed thoroughly. Therefore, in this study, a supervised method is proposed to understand driving behavioral structure and the latent driving styles by incorporating the prior knowledge. Firstly, a novel method is established for driving behavioral encoding and raw driving data mining. Then, the Labeled Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LLDA) is proposed to understand the latent driving styles from individual driving with driving behaviors. Finally, the Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD) data are used to validate the performance of the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed model uncovers latent driving styles effectively and shows good agreement to real situations, which provides theoretical guidance on driving behavior recognition for better individual experience on automated driving vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]