Lane Change Hazard Analysis Using Radar Traces to Identify Conflicts and Time-To-Collision Measures (05-082)

Project Description: This project sought to analyze existing data to support Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111 rulemaking efforts to investigate camera-based side view systems by assessing the safety equivalency of prototype video-based camera systems. This was accomplished by mining an existing set of radar data surrounding real-world lane change events. The study was performed in Southwest Virginia using thirty-six (36) drivers experiencing both conventional and camera-based systems over a month-long naturalistic exposure period (2 weeks conventional, 2 weeks camera-based). Study vehicles were instrumented with a Data Acquisition Systems (DAS) to capture and record time-synchronized video and parametric measures from key-on through key-off (i.e., the entirety of each trip). Analyses focused on potential lane change conflicts and hazards identified using Time-to-Collision values (which in turn were derived from rear-mounted radar units) surrounding signalized lane change events. Results provided no compelling evidence to suggest that camera-based systems adversely impacted lane change performance leading to riskier or more hazardous lane changes compared to conventional mirror systems. Results instead suggested that camera-based systems, when appropriately designed, can help drivers to detect potential conflicts as a result of the wider field-of-view afforded by these systems, enabling drivers to assess the presence of a vehicle in the target lane. Data Scope: The interactive app “Lane_Change_viz_V1” app is created as a learning education module for a Safe-D project: Lane Change Hazard Analysis Using Radar Traces to Identify Conflicts and Time-To-Time Collision Measures. This application helps to visualize the kinematic data acquired from the subject vehicle, lane marking acquired from computer vision, and raw radar data acquired from two Continental® Radar PLC units with short-range radar (SRR320) mounted on the back bumper facing straight backward of the subject vehicle for six example cases. This application further helps to visualize the processed data and how the processed data is used for extracting useful information to calculate safety measures. For additional information, please refer to the project website: https://safed.vtti.vt.edu/projects/lane-change-hazard-analysis-using-radar-traces-to-identify-conflicts-and-time-to-collision/ Data Specification: Please see to attached file “Safe-D_05-082_Data_Specification.pdf”.