Potential Risk Assessment Algorithm in Car Following

In this paper, a potential risk assessment algorithm is proposed. The obvious risk assessment measure is defined as time to collision (TTC), whereas the potential risk measure is defined as the time before the host vehicle has to decelerate to avoid a rear-end collision assuming that the target vehicle brakes, i.e. time margin (TM). The driving behavior of the human driver in the dangerous car following scenario is studied by using the naturalistic driving data collected by video drive record (VDR), which include 78 real dangerous car following dangerous scenarios. A potential risk assessment algorithm was constructed using TM and the dangerous car following scenarios. Firstly, the braking starting time during dangerous car following is identified. Next, the TM at brake starting time of the 78 dangerous car following scenarios is analyzed. In the last, the thresholds of the potential risk levels are achieved. It is found that the potential risk assessment algorithm can detect the possibility of danger earlier than that using TTC. And the potential risk assessment algorithm can describe the danger when the relative speed of the host vehicle and the target vehicle is small.