Characteristic Vehicular Deceleration for Known Hazards

This paper quantifies the deceleration of motor vehicles as they were routinely stopped for an expected hazard in a real world environment. It was observed that the deceleration rate varied non-linearly, with a peak value of about 0.25g as the vehicle decelerated through the speed range of 20 to 30 km/h. This deceleration pattern was common to all evaluated categories of passenger vehicles.

A mathematical model was developed to define the deceleration profile; enhancement of this model yielded predictive relations for the velocity, position and remaining braking time of decelerating passenger vehicles.