The DaCoTa project Deliverable D5.5 is devoted to the evaluation of the capacity of safety functions to compensate for drivers' needs as they can be diagnosed through in-depth accident analysis. Two main criteria are used in this purpose: 1) the ability of each function to meet the needs of the drivers (e.g. if the driver shows a need in detection or diagnosis, is the system considered devoted to giving the information or diagnosis needed?); 2) their capacity to cope with the parameters of the situations in which these needs were found (e.g. time/space constraints, trigger threshold of the system, physiological state of the driver, behavioural considerations, etc.). The study is conducted on a sample of 445 road traffic in-depth accident studies involving passenger cars, two-wheelers and pedestrians. It is applied to the e-safety functions addressed in detail within the technical DaCoTa Deliverable D5.2 ("Catalogue of the current safety systems") plus some e-safety functions dedicated to powered-two wheelers (PTW) and also infrastructure-based functions. The results present in detail for each accident configuration (car versus car, car versus PTW, car versus pedestrian, single vehicle accidents), and for each phase of the accident (approaching phase, rupture phase, emergency phase), the potential capacity of the safety functions to meet driver's needs. They also give a precise indication on all the parameters that could act as a potential limitation to the effectiveness of the systems. It is impossible to sum up all these results in a general figure. Everything must at least be analyzed relatively to 1) The accident configuration and 2) The moment of the accident process concerned. On the one hand, the context of the accident production and the failures of the drivers involved are different depending on the whether the accident scenario concerns passenger cars, PTWs, pedestrian or involve single vehicle accidents. Reflecting this difference, the drivers' needs to fulfill by the systems and the situational constraints to cope with are different depending on the configuration considered. On the other hand, depending on that fact that the aid system is able to intervene at the approach / rupture / emergency phase, the required functionalities are necessarily different. That is why it is necessary, not only to evaluate the capacities and weakness of the system as a whole, but as a function of their moment of intervention. The interest of the detailed results presented in the report are first to allow estimating the more or less appropriateness of the current and on study safety systems, but also their weaknesses when considering real accident situation constraints. They also give some clues on the needs which are still not covered by the present devices. As such, these results can be considered as a contribution to the prospective ergonomics of safety systems, allowing their improvement for a better answer to the needs shown by drivers in accident situations and to the contextual constraints found in these situations. (Author/publisher)
Abstract