Investigating Drivers' Response under Car-Following Situations

Abstract

The perception response time of drivers is one of the most important human factors that have significant influence on driving safety. This is the only parameter that unites all car-following models. Some early literatures dealt this parameter as a constant; however more recent investigations have shown that such assumption might not be valid. This paper reports an investigation conducted on the response time of drivers based on vehicle trajectory data collected from test track experiments conducted in Japan using RTK GPS receivers. A new method was proposed to estimate time-variant response time under car-following situations incorporating some important features of car-following behavior such as perception threshold of drivers. The response time data computed using the method was analyzed to investigate inter-personal and intra-personal variations and influence of driving conditions on the response time. The investigation revealed some important features of human driving behavior.