A Study on the Evaluation of Smoothness and Safety of Traffic Flow on the General Road Mixed with Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

In recent years, the practical application of driver assistance technologies has been advancing in Japan, and it is expected that efforts toward the social implementation of autonomous driving systems will continue to intensify in the future. It is expected that the widespread use of autonomous vehicles will help to reduce traffic congestion and accidents. On the other hand, in the transitional period where autonomous vehicles and conventional vehicles coexist, traffic flow may be adversely affected by the difference in driving behavior of the vehicles. In this study, a traffic flow simulator was developed to simulate the mixed traffic flow, and the smoothness and safety of the traffic flow were quantitatively evaluated by changing the mixing rate of autonomous vehicles and the setting values of the driving behavior parameters. As a result, it was confirmed that the influence on the traffic flow differed greatly depending on the mixing rate of the autonomous vehicles and the driving behavior parameters.