Impact Analysis of a Low-speed Autonomous Vehicle on Traffic Flow and Following Vehicles in Urban Contexts

Abstract

For the social implementing autonomous vehicles, technology development, demonstration experiments, and legislation are being promoted in the world. However, there are many challenges for introduction. The purpose of our research is to analyze and grasp the impact of low-speed autonomous vehicles on traffic flow and following vehicles in urban area. In particular, we analyzed the data collected by the observations in the demonstration experiment in Toyota City. As a result, it was clarified that the headway-time increases and the passing traffic volume decreases at a signalized intersection, when a low-speed autonomous vehicle is mixed in. Also, the inter vehicular distance between the autonomous driving vehicle and the following vehicles tended to be significantly smaller in non-intersection. Further, it was clarified that the following vehicles of low-speed autonomous driving have been closed for a long time, and the following vehicles have overtaking in spite of the yellow line.