Critical values of driver response time and its impact on reducing reliability and safety in road traffic
Andrzej Kornacki, Jacek Wawrzosek, Andrzej Bochniak, Andrzej Szymanek, Halina Pawlak · Eksploatacja i Niezawodnosc - Maintenance and Reliability · 2016
CritiCal values of driver response time and its impaCt on reduCing reliability and safety in road traffiC KrytyCzne wartośCi Czasu reaKCji KierowCy i iCh wpływ na obniżenie niezawodnośCi i bezpieCzeństwa ruChu drogowego*Road traffic is among the most dangerous types of human activity.The main causes of road accidents are driver fatigue, poor physical and mental condition of drivers and overestimating one's skills while driving.This study focuses on the estimation of driver response time, as the basis of a hypothetical system that uses short and long-range radars, which determines the physical and mental condition of a driver, based on the analysis of "acceleration noise" of the vehicle following its predecessor.This work highlights serious consequences of the fact that driver response time is described by means of a distribution with heavy tails, and thus may be a source of hazard in the driver-vehicle system.Extremes of driver response time were treated as outliers in this study.Their detection was attained by using the Akaike information criterion [1,2], which is an alternative to conventional methods of testing hypotheses.Untypical, on account of their outlying nature, values are interpreted as critical driver response time values which potentially endanger the reliability of driving.