Behavioral reactions to advanced cruise control: results of a driving simulator experiment

This chapter describes an experimental study that is conducted in the driving simulator at the Centre for Environmental and Traffic Psychology (COV) of the University of Groningen. In the experiment, two groups of drivers, who differed with respect to reported driving style in terms of speed, drove on a motorway and on a rural road route in the driving simulator. They drove the same routes with a normal car and with an ACC system with adjustable headway settings. In a previous driving simulator experiment, it was found that drivers who differed in their driving style (particularly regarding speed) show different reactions to driving with an ACC. In this study hypotheses were tested with respect to Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) use on two types of roads: motorways and rural roads. The results show that there is no difference in acceptance of ACC's on the two different road types. But driving with an ACC on the rural road leads to dangerous overtaking behaviour and delayed reactions to traffic from the right. It is concluded that carefulness is implied with the introduction of ACC's to different road types. Behavioural adaptation may seriously deteriorate traffic safety, particularly on rural roads