Truck drivers as stakeholders in cooperative driving

Cooperative driving for trucks has been claimed to bring substantial benefits for society and fleet owners because of better throughput and reduced fuel consumption, but benefits for truck drivers are questionable. While most work on cooperative driving focuses on the technology, the current paper focuses on the consequences for drivers and how to deal with those. Two concepts are proposed and evaluated. One concept supports drivers in coordinating cooperative driving with other truck drivers to locate, join, and quit platoons. The other concept provides drivers of following trucks with situation awareness by means of a "see through" system displaying camera images from the lead vehicle. A user evaluation in a driving simulator confirms that cooperative driving may have largely negative benefits for truck drivers, and that concepts such as the ones described in this paper may help to improve the cooperative driving situation for truck drivers.