Human Performance in Critical Scenarios as a Benchmark for Highly Automated Vehicles
Image credit: unsplashBefore highly automated vehicles (HAVs) become part of everyday traffic, their safety must be proven.
The use of human performance as a benchmark represents a promising approach - yet, appropriate methods to quantify and compare human and HAV performance remain rare.
By adapting the method of constant stimuli, a scenario-based approach to quantify the limit of human performance is developed.
This method is applied in a driving simulator study, where participants repeatedly face a cut-in manoeuvre on a highway.
By systematically manipulating the criticality of the manoeuvre - defined in terms of time to collision (TTC) - humans’ collision-avoidance performance can be measured.
Key Method
- The limit of human performance is identified using logistic regression.
- The regression curve and its inflection point allow direct comparison between human and HAV performance.
Conclusion
The presented approach provides a practical means by which HAVs’ safety performance can be evaluated and proven against human driving capabilities.
