A driving simulator experiment was carried out to assess the effects of Intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) on driving behaviour. ICC is an in-vehicle system that automatically regulates a vehicle's speed and that is also capable of maintaining a proper following distance behind a lead vehicle. ICC can realize a moderate level of deceleration: in situations that require hard braking, the driver must take over control. The results showed that ICC yields more consistent longitudinal control: in car-following situations, there is less variation in headway and in speed. It also appeared that when driving with ICC, subjects select a lower free-driving speed compared to their driving speed on the same scenario on the same scenario without ICC. In the critical scenarios where the subject had to take over control from the ICC, a later reaction was found especially in the first runs of the experiment. There was no difference between the foot-on-gas and the foot-off-gas ICC types in terms of driving behaviour. The questionnaire results, however, showed that subjects were highly in favour of the foot-off-gas type ICC, even though the overall judgements of both ICC types were positive.
Abstract