Ethical dilemmas are a common challenge in everyday driving, requiring human drivers to balance competing priorities such as safety, efficiency, and rule compliance. However, much of the existing research in automated vehicles (AVs) has focused on high-stakes "trolley problems," which involve extreme and rare situations. Such scenarios, though rich in ethical implications, are rarely applicable in real-world AV decision-making. In practice, when AVs confront everyday ethical dilemmas, they often appear to prioritise strict adherence to traffic rules. By contrast, human drivers may bend the rules in context-specific situations, using judgement informed by practical concerns such as safety and efficiency. According to the concept of meaningful human control, AVs should respond to human reasons, including those of drivers, vulnerable road users, and policymakers. This work introduces a novel human reasons-based supervision framework that detects when AV behaviour misaligns with expected human reasons to trigger trajectory reconsideration. The framework integrates with motion planning and control systems to support real-time adaptation, enabling decisions that better reflect safety, efficiency, and regulatory considerations. Simulation results demonstrate that this approach could help AVs respond more effectively to ethical challenges in dynamic driving environments by prompting replanning when the current trajectory fails to align with human reasons. These findings suggest that our approach offers a path toward more adaptable, human-centered decision-making in AVs.

This study utilized Virtual Reality (VR) experiments to investigate pedestrian-autonomous vehicle interaction in shared spaces. In the VR experiment, pedestrians attempt to cross the road under different conditions, including the presence of another pedestrian, different external Human-Machine-Interfaces, AV driving styles, and road conditions. We employed an innovative VR setup that enabled two pedestrians to interact in real time with physical movements within an immersive VR environment. Overall, we found that the presence of multiple pedestrians significantly influenced pedestrian movement dynamics during road crossing. Additionally, the relative standing position had a significant impact on the distant pedestrians regarding time before crossing and vehicle-gazing behavior. While previous studies predominantly focused on pedestrian-AV interaction with a single pedestrian, this study takes an important step forward in terms of theory, methods, and relevance by considering interactions between multiple pedestrians and AVs. The findings establish a basis for further exploration of pedestrian-AV interaction in shared space.

The use of partially automated driving systems raises concerns about potential responsibility issues, posing risk to the system safety, acceptance, and adoption of these technologies. The concept of meaningful human control has emerged in response to the responsibility gap problem, requiring the fulfillment of two conditions, tracking and tracing. While this concept has provided important philosophical and design insights on automated driving systems, there is currently little knowledge on how meaningful human control relates to subjective experiences of actual users of these systems. To address this gap, our study aimed to investigate the alignment between the degree of meaningful human control and drivers’ perceptions of safety and trust in a real-world partially automated driving system. We utilized previously collected data from interviews with Tesla "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) Beta users, investigating the alignment between the user perception and how well the system was tracking the users’ reasons. We found that tracking of users’ reasons for driving tasks (such as safe maneuvers) correlated with perceived safety and trust, albeit with notable exceptions. Surprisingly, failure to track lane changing and braking reasons was not necessarily associated with negative perceptions of safety. However, the failure of the system to track expected maneuvers in dangerous situations always resulted in low trust and perceived lack of safety. Overall, our analyses highlight alignment points but also possible discrepancies between perceived safety and trust on the one hand, and meaningful human control on the other hand. Our results can help the developers of automated driving technology to design systems under meaningful human control and are perceived as safe and trustworthy.

Drivers initiate a discretionary lane change when they perceive an anticipated improvement in their own driving condition from moving to another lane. However, such a lane change can slow down other vehicles on the target lane, and even worse initiate a disturbance. In this work, we argue that the blocking effect triggered by individual lane changes results from the heterogeneity in the desired speeds of vehicles, and thus using desired speed information of vehicles when regulating lane-changing decisions can improve traffic efficiency. In doing so, our work also exemplifies the usefulness of incorporating user preferences into control decisions. The proposed lane guidance system uses an optimization-based approach to update the target range of desired speeds on each lane in real time, and accordingly recommends individual lane changes. The control system coordinates the lane-changing decisions at the link level, for which the road stretch is subdivided into multiple sections that are controlled independently. We evaluate the performance of the lane guidance system in micro-simulation, for different network demands and desired speed distributions. The results highlight that the proposed approach utilizing the desired speed preferences of drivers results in positive efficiency gains for most traffic compositions in free flow. Moreover, the highest gains are expected in medium to high demand, and when the traffic composition includes a higher proportion of vehicles desiring higher speeds. The gains also increase when the desired speeds of vehicles that want to drive fast and those that want to drive slower are more separated.

The gradual deployment of automated vehicles (AVs) results in mixed traffic where AVs will interact with human-driven vehicles (HDVs). Thus, social-aware motion planning and control while considering interactions with HDVs on the road is critical for AVs' deployment and safe driving under various maneuvers. Previous research mostly focuses on the trajectory planning of AVs using Model Predictive Control or other relevant methods, while seldom considering the integrated planning and control of AVs altogether to simplify the whole pipeline architecture. Furthermore, there are very limited studies on social-aware driving that makes AVs understandable and expected by human drivers, and none when it comes to the challenging maneuver of driving through roundabouts. To fill these research gaps, this paper develops an integrated social-aware planning and control algorithm for AVs' driving through roundabouts based on Driving Risk Field (DRF), Social Value Orientation (SVO), and Model Predictive Contouring Control (MPCC), i.e., DRF-SVO-MPCC. The proposed method is tested and verified with simulation on the open-sourced highway-env platform. Compared with the baseline method using purely Nonlinear Model Predictive Control, the DRF-SVO-MPCC can achieve better performance under various maneuvers of driving through roundabouts with and without surrounding HDVs.

The increase in perception capabilities of connected mobile sensor platforms (e.g., self-driving vehicles, drones, and robots) leads to an extensive surge of sensed features at various temporal and spatial scales. Beyond their traditional use for safe operation, available observations could enable to see how and where people move on sidewalks and cycle paths, to eventually obtain a complete microscopic and macroscopic picture of the traffic flows in a larger area. This paper proposes a new method for advanced traffic applications, tracking an unknown and varying number of moving targets (e.g., pedestrians or cyclists) constrained by a road network, using mobile (e.g., vehicles) spatially distributed sensor platforms. The key contribution in this paper is to introduce the concept of network bound targets into the multi-target tracking problem, and hence to derive a network-constrained multi-hypotheses tracker (NC-MHT) to fully utilize the available road information. This is done by introducing a target representation, comprising a traditional target tracking representation and a discrete component placing the target on a given segment in the network. A simulation study shows that the method performs well in comparison to the standard MHT filter in free space. Results particularly highlight network-constraint effects for more efficient target predictions over extended periods of time, and in the simplification of the measurement association process, as compared to not utilizing a network structure. This theoretical work also directs attention to latent privacy concerns for potential applications.

We present a simulation-based approach to assess the safety impacts of vehicles equipped with Automated Driving Systems (ADS) in mixed traffic with Human-driven Vehicles (HV). Specifically, we compare two generic longitudinal strategies of ADS to handle a cut-in: Reactive ADS acting only when the cut-in vehicle crosses the target lane boundary, and Predictive ADS acting at the onset of the cut-in manoeuvre. We identify their distinctive effects on the traffic safety under cut-in maneuvers of adjacent human-driven vehicles at highway merges. We employ a microscopic traffic flow simulator that describes the lane changing process with high detail, accounting for the vehicle interaction and consequent trajectory updates. These high-resolution trajectories are post-processed to estimate a set of relevant surrogate measures of safety. By analyzing these measures, we find that the predictive ADS significantly outperforms the reactive ADS in aspects such as temporal proximity to crash, expected crash severity and the driving risk (combining the two aspects), and the number of aborted lane changes by HV. The negative safety impact of reactive ADS becomes prominent at penetration rate > 10%. The major difference between the two ADS approaches appears in the dynamics of risk during the lane changing. When a vehicle cuts in ahead of Reactive ADS, the risk peaks approximately halfway through the maneuver; whereas with Predictive ADS the risk remains marginal throughout. This work demonstrates the potential of simulation-based safety assessment to differentiate the safety impacts of automation functionalities at an early stage of product development.

Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to improve traffic operations when they cooperatively maneuver in merging sections. State-of-the-art approaches in cooperative merging either build on heuristics solutions or prohibit mainline CAVs to change lane on multilane highways. This paper proposes a hierarchical cooperative merging control approach that ensures collision-free and traffic-efficient merging through the interaction of a maneuver planner and an operational trajectory controller. The planner predicts future vehicular trajectories, including acceleration trajectories and time instants when lane changes start, in a long horizon up to 50 seconds with a linear prediction model. It establishes the optimal dynamic vehicle sequence in each lane by minimizing predicted traffic disturbances that can propagate upstream and lead to traffic breakdown. During the process, mainline vehicles may change lane to facilitate the on-ramp merging, albeit with a higher ego cost. The operational controller follows the established instructions from the planner and regulates vehicular trajectories with model predictive control in a shorter horizon of 6 seconds. The performance of the designed hierarchical cooperative merging control approach was compared to a cooperative merging method utilizing widely used first-in-first-out rule to establish merging sequences and the same operational controller to generate vehicular trajectories. Systematic comparison shows that the proposed approach consistently results in less disturbances during merging under 528 different scenarios with different traffic states, initial vehicular states, and desired time gap settings. On average, a decrease of 39.18% in disturbances was observed.

Current lane-based microscopic traffic simulators combine car-following and lane changing logic to describe the (often discrete) lateral vehicle motion on multi-lane road segments. However, the simulated lateral trajectories are physically unplausible and inside-lane behavior such as lane-keeping and curve negotiation cannot be modelled. In this work, we integrate lateral vehicle dynamics and yaw motion into a traffic simulation framework, aiming to describe lateral motion and vehicle interactions with more precision. The resulting framework consists of two coupled layers, an upper tactical level that plans maneuvers such as lane-changing; and a lower operational layer with a control module (steering and acceleration control) that operates in a closed loop with the bicycle model of vehicle dynamics. The feedback mechanism between the layers allows for dynamic trajectory re-planning. Unlike the microscopic traffic models, the proposed framework accounts for lateral vehicle dynamics and yaw motion; provides additional variables such as vehicle heading and front wheel steering angle; and is hence termed as submicroscopic. Case study results demonstrate the power of the framework to include lateral maneuvers such as curve negotiation, corrective steering, lane change abortion and fragmented lane changing. The framework was operationalized to model multi-lane traffic flow consisting of human-driven vehicles. At the macroscopic level, the traffic flow simulation can reproduce phenomena such as capacity drop. Thus the framework preserves the properties of the component models and at the same time describe the continuous 2-D planar movement of vehicles.

Gap selection and dynamic speed profiles of interacting vehicles at on-ramps affect the safety and efficiency of highway merging sections. This paper puts forward a hierarchical control approach for Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) to achieve efficient and safe merging operations. A tactical layer controller employs a second-order car-following model with a cooperative merging mode to represent a cooperative merging process and generates an optimal vehicle merging sequence and time instants when on-ramp CAVs start to adapt their speeds and positions to prepare merging into the target gaps respectively. An operational layer controller is designed based on Model Predictive Control (MPC). It uses a third-order vehicle dynamics model and optimizes desired accelerations for CAVs and the time instants when the on-ramp CAVs initiate the lane-changing executions respectively. Both the tactical layer controller and operational layer controller derive their control commands by minimizing an objective function for different time horizons. The objective function penalizes deviations of CAVs’ inter-vehicle gaps to their desired values, relative speeds to their direct predecessors, and actual or desired accelerations, subject to constraints on velocities, actual or desired accelerations, and inter-vehicle gaps. The performance of the proposed hierarchical control framework and a benchmark on-ramp merging method using afirst-in-first-outrule to determine the merging sequence is demonstrated under 135 scenarios with different initial conditions, desired time gap settings, and numbers of on-ramp vehicles. The experimental results show the superiority of the hierarchical control approach.

Lower levels of automation are designed to work in specific conditions referred to as the Operational Design Domain (ODD). Beyond these conditions, the human driver is expected to take control. A mismatch between a driver's understanding and expectations of the automated vehicle capabilities and its actual capabilities as prescribed in the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) manual, could affect their safety and trust in automation. The main aim of this study is to develop a method for assessing the ODD of lane keeping system equipped vehicles. The analysis method is composed of an objective driving risk measure based on the Probabilistic Driving Risk Field (PDRF), and a subjective risk measure based on driver behavior, trust and situation awareness. We demonstrate the method applicability using the Automated Lane Keeping system of the Tesla Model S. A field test was conducted with 19 participants on public roads in the Netherlands including situations within and outside the defined ODD by the OEM. Across all test situations, a mismatch was observed between the ODD specified by the OEM and by the driver. Situations outside the ODD (i.e. no-lane markings and on/off-ramp) were often regarded as within the ODD by the participants. Situations inside the ODD (i.e. tunnel and curve) were mostly correctly classified by the participants. This analysis method has the potential to aid OEMs and road operators in defining more clearly the ODD while taking into account the driver's safety and awareness of the system capabilities.

Modern intelligent transport solutions can achieve an improvement of traffic flow on motorways. With lane-specific measurements and lane-specific control, more measures are possible. Single frequency precise point positioning (PPP) is a newly developed and affordable technique to achieve an improved position accuracy compared with global positioning system (GPS) standalone positioning. GPS-PPP allows for sub-meter accurate positioning, in real time, of vehicles on a motorway. This paper tests this technique in real life; moreover, it presents a methodology to map the lanes on a motorway using data collected by this technique. The methodology exploits the high accuracy and the fact that the most driving is within a lane. In a field test, a GPS-PPP equipped vehicle drives a specific motorway stretch 100 times, for which the GPS-PPP trajectory data are collected. Using these data, the positions and the widths of different lanes are successfully estimated. Comparison with the ground truth shows a dm accuracy. With the parametrized lanes, vehicles can be tracked down to a lane with the GPS-PPP device.

We design controllers and derive implementable algorithms for autonomous and cooperative car-following control (CFC) systems under a receding horizon control framework. An autonomous CFC system controls vehicle acceleration to optimize its own situation, whereas a cooperative CFC (C-CFC) system coordinates accelerations of cooperative vehicles to optimize the joint situation. To realize simultaneous control of many vehicles in a traffic system, decentralized and distributed algorithms are implemented in a microscopic traffic simulator for CFC and C-CFC controllers, respectively. The impacts of the proposed controllers on dynamic traffic flow features, particularly on formation and propagation of moving jams, are investigated through a simulation on a two-lane freeway with CFC/C-CFC vehicles randomly distributed. The simulation shows that the proposed decentralized CFC and distributed C-CFC algorithms are implementable in microscopic simulations, and the assessment reveals that CFC and C-CFC systems change moving jam characteristics substantially.

In-car tactical advice is advice that is given in-car concerning the tactical scale, e.g. lane changing and desired speed and headway, and that has been shown to reduce travel time delay. We assess the effects of detector data delay on traffic state prediction and on the effectiveness of in-car tactical advice using microscopic simulation. Interestingly, effectiveness does not reduce with data delays from 0s up to 180s, indicating that for the presented case, congestion is predicted with sufficient accuracy. However, estimation errors in speed and flow increase, and accuracy of advices (including false negatives and positives) decreases. Consequently, compliance, and as a result effectiveness, may be expected to reduce for larger data delay. This paper shows that in-car tactical advice may reduce travel time delay with about 33% even if drivers are attentive and relatively efficient without advice.

This paper presents a new in-car advisory system that gives advices on lane, speed, and headway. The advices are determined at a traffic management center based on a new lane level traffic state prediction model, in order to prevent or solve suboptimal traffic flow conditions. The system aims for an optimal lane distribution in high flow conditions, decreasing the chance of spillback by advising drivers away from the right lane, and a reduction in the capacity drop by advising drivers to maintain a short (but safe) headway at the end of congestion. The system is implemented in microscopic simulation to evaluate the potential benefits for different penetration and compliance rates. Benefits at both low and high rates are found as only a small redistribution of traffic over the lanes may be required to stabilize flow. The capacity drop is mainly reduced at high rates as it is required that many vehicles accelerate more. The maximum benefit found is a reduction of 49% in travel time delay. Effects are smaller at lower rates. Negative side effects are also found, including oversaturation of lanes partially by advised lane changes and increased probability of spillback taking effect.

Uphill sections have often been identified as capacity bottlenecks in freeway networks. One of the main reasons seems to be that drivers reduce speed when they reach the beginning of an uphill section. With high traffic demand, the deceleration of the first vehicle of a platoon can generate a flow disturbance that amplifies as it propagates upstream, triggering the formation of a traffic jam. This paper presents a proof of concept by exploring whether equipping the leader of a platoon with an in-vehicle Gradient Compensation System (GCS) can improve traffic flow efficiency on uphill sections. The GCS assists the driver in performing the longitudinal driving task at uphill sections. We present the results of a series of traffic simulation experiments in which a platoon of vehicles drive on a single-lane freeway stretch containing an uphill section. The phenomenon of speed reduction is modeled by means of a sub-microscopic traffic simulation program. The results show that if the platoon leader is not equipped with the GCS, its speed drop at the beginning of the uphill section can cause a traffic breakdown, as observed in reality. However, if the platoon leader is equipped with the GCS, the magnitude of the speed drop is reduced, preventing congestion formation.

Too slow acceleration of cars downstream a traffic jam can have a dramatic impact on the jam's lifetime and cause much delay for motorists behind. It has been observed that cars leaving a traffic jam reach cruise speed much later than predicted by car-following models and space headway to the car ahead tends to be long. Using traffic flow simulation we have quantified the delays caused by such driving behavior. We also review some speculations that explain the driving style and possible remedies through vehicle intelligence.

Lane changes are important in quantifying traffic for both operational and planning purposes. Traditional in-lane loop detectors do not count lane changes; hence, historically, traffic engineers have estimated them using other data sources. This paper provides a method for estimating the number of lane changes based on observations of “straddling” vehicles that are simultaneously detected by the loops in adjacent lanes. In the data considered here, such “straddles” almost always correspond to vehicles that are in the process of changing lanes. However, many lane changes take place between detector sites and, hence, do not result in straddles. The methods developed here estimate probability distribution for the number of lane changes given an observed number of straddles. The efficacy of this approach depends on calibration issues and on the size of the aggregation period. In the evaluation study presented here, the results are good: The proposed method gives the number of lane changes with approximately 10% error, even though the number of lane changes per aggregation period varies by a factor of 10 over time.

In this paper we propose a novel design for the Lane Change Assistant (LCA). For drivers on the highway, LCA advises them on whether it is safe to change lanes under the current traffic conditions. We focus on how the LCA can provide a reliable advice in practice by considering the issues of changing circumstances and measurement uncertainties. Under some generic assumptions we develop a micro-simulation model for the lane change safety assessment. The model is in line with the car following models and lane change algorithms available in literature. It retains a probabilistic character to accurately represent realistic situations. Based on a sensitivity study we are able to develop a robust design for the LCA. In this design the system accounts for the practical uncertainties by including appropriate extra safety distances. The driver interface consists of a spectrum of five LED lights, each operating on a distinct color (varying from red to green) and guaranteeing a certain safety degree. Our results allow car developers to easily acquire reliable designs for the LCA.

This paper presents a continuous traffic-flow model for the explorative analysis of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADASs). Such systems use technology (sensors and intervehicle communication) to support the task of the driver, who retains full control over the vehicle. Based on a review of different traffic-flow modeling approaches and their suitability for exploring traffic-flow patterns in the presence of ADASs, kinetic traffic-flow models are selected because of their good representation on both the aggregate level (congestion dynamics) and the level of the individual vehicle (vehicular interactions either directly or through intervehicle communication). The human-kinetic modeling approach is presented. It is a multiclass variant of kinetic traffic-flow models that is strongly based on individual driver behavior, i.e., on fully continuous acceleration/deceleration behavior and explicit modeling of the activation level of the driver. The strength of this modeling approach is illustrated by application to a driver-assistance system that uses intervehicle communication. It warns drivers when approaching sharp decelerations in a queue tail. The explorative analysis shows that the system results in safer and smoother transition from free-flowing to congested traffic. It also avoids compression of the queue tail, thus preventing the emergence of stop-and-go congestion patterns.

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is an extension of ACC. In addition to measuring the distance to a predecessor, a vehicle can also exchange information with a predecessor by wireless communication. This enables a vehicle to follow its predecessor at a closer distance under tighter control. This paper focuses on the impact of CACC on traffic-flow characteristics. It uses the traffic-flow simulation model MIXIC that was specially designed to study the impact of intelligent vehicles on traffic flow. The authors study the impacts of CACC for a highway-merging scenario from four to three lanes. The results show an improvement of traffic-flow stability and a slight increase in traffic-flow efficiency compared with the merging scenario without equipped vehicles

A study is made of a queueing system which is intended to model local area networks with slotted ring protocols and which generalizes some previously studied models. The author defines a special type of stability, called tau -stability, which is related to the slot rotation time tau . The author also presents a condition which is necessary for tau -stability of the queue length process and shows that under certain assumptions this condition is at the same time a sufficient condition.>