Field evaluation of safety impacts of adaptive cruise control

This paper provides an attempt at evaluating the safety impacts of an Adapt ive Cruise Control (ACC) system relative to Conventional Cruise Control (CC C) utilizing data that were gathered as part of a Field Operational Test (F OT) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The safety of the ACC system is quantified cons idering three surrogate safety measures. The first safety measure considers the car-following behavior of an ACC system relative to manual driving in order to identify potential differences in driver/vehicle aggressiveness. T he second safety measure considers changes in demands on driver resources a ssociated with ACC technology, The third, and final safety measure, conside rs differences in the number of braking maneuvers and near encounters assoc iated with ACC and CCC driving. These three surrogate safety measures are u tilized to identify any potential hazards that could be associated with an ACC system. The three surrogate safety measures demonstrate consistency between ACC and manual car-following behavior, an increased usage of cruise control with a daptive features, reductions in driver manual resources and potential reduc tions in visual resources, and no differences in braking interventions and "near encounters." These findings collectively suggest that the use of ACC does not appear to impose a safety hazard on transportation system.