A microsimulation approach for the impact assessment of a Vehicle-to-Infrastructure based Road Hazard Warning system

TL;DR

This paper presents a microscopic simulation method to evaluate Vehicle-to-Infrastructure systems' impact on traffic safety and efficiency during road hazards, introducing a new gap control safety mechanism.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microscopic simulation approach for V2I hazard warning systems, including explicit collision modeling and a new gap control mechanism for safety enhancement.

Findings

V2I hazard warnings improve traffic safety.

The gap control mechanism reduces collision risk.

Traffic efficiency is positively affected.

Abstract

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) constitute technologies which enable vehicles to communicate with each other and with road infrastructure. Verification or testing is required for C-ITS applications, in order to assess their impact on traffic operation. In this work, a microscopic traffic simulation approach is used, to evaluate the impact of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) technologies in the context of a road traffic accident. Specifically, the methodology is implemented to explicitly models vehicles collisions, Road Hazard Warning (RHW), Emergency Electronic Brake Light (EEBL) warnings and the resulting driver behavior. Moreover, a new gap control mechanism is adopted, to improve safety by advising vehicles in hazard lane to increase their headways with respect to their preceding vehicle, so that they can avoid a collision. Perfect communication links to all vehicles are assumed. The study findings indicate that the proposed V2I hazard warning strategy has a positive impact on traffic flow safety and efficiency.