Automation of road traffic may have a large potential for improving the performance of the traffic system. For the not too far distant future, systems that support or automate parts of the driving task will appear on the market. On a longer term fully automated driving on parts of a road network may become possible. The acceptance of automated driving may play an important role in the feasibility of Automated Vehicle Guidance (AVG). As short headways may result in the most dramatic increase in road capacity, a study into the acceptability of short headways in an automated traffic system compared to manual driving, has been carried out. The experiment consisted of two parts with complementary methods to assess methods to assess the relationship between headways and acceptability. Based on the results of the experiments, recommendations are derived for the design headway of a comfortable AVG system.
Abstract