Finding general characteristics of vehicle-platooning safety using empirical car-following simulation

摘要

This paper aims to numerically clarify general characteristics of vehicle-platooning safety. A simulation study based on real-world observed drivers' car-following data was carried out to evaluate safety of car-following, assessing possibility of causing front-to-rear-end collision in a platoon. The severity of danger in car-following was evaluated in terms of three parameters such as vehicle reaction time T, initial spacing L and sensitivity factor λ. Numerical example showed that there are some car-following situations where the vehicle platooning safety was suddenly deteriorated with tiny change of T, L and λ, and that insufficiently large sensitivity factor λ created severe dangerous car-following regardless of vehicle spacing.