Driver Behavior in Forward Collision and Lane Departure Scenarios

In 2010, 32,855 fatalities and over 2.2 million injuries occurred in automobile crashes, not to mention the immense economic impact on our society. Two of the four most frequent types of crashes are rear-end and lane departure crashes. In 2011, rear-end crashes accounted for approximately 28% of all crashes while lane departure crashes accounted for approximately 9%. This paper documents a study on the NADS-1 driving simulator to support the development of driver behavior modeling. Good models of driver behavior will support the development of algorithms that can detect normal and abnormal behavior, as well as warning systems that can issue useful alerts to the driver. Several scenario events were designed to fill gaps in previous crash research. For example, previous studies at NADS focused on crash events in which the driver was severely distracted immediately before the event. The events in this study included a sample of undistracted drivers. Additionally, this study included data collection on an unforced lane departure event, in addition to the forward collision scenarios. This paper summarizes the experimental design and results, including comparisons between these data and legacy data involving distracted forward collision events. This is the second study in a series of three funded by the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center.