Two aspects of Autonomous Intelligent Cruise Control (AICC) are investigated: individual behaviour and aggregated traffic handling and safety. For the individual behaviour a simulator study was executed. It appeared that mean speed was lower with AICC than without in the free diving condition. In the car-following task the amount of very short following distances decreased; most following times peaked around 1.5 seconds, which was the AICC time. For the aggregated traffic behaviour a microsimulation was executed. The following effects were found: a small increase of travel time, a decrease of standard deviation of travel time, a decrease of mean speed and of standard deviation of speed. However, a specific combination of AICC parameters and busy traffic resulted in a breakdown of traffic handling. It is concluded that an AICC system may have various effects on traffic, some of which may be unwanted, and individual and aggregated effects may differ. (A)
Samenvatting