CTS - Driver Behavior in China

Purpose and goal

The main research question in HMI project involves if/how the HMI design of ADAS systems, developed in Western countries, give safety benefits to Chinese drivers and what adaptive design is needed. The main objective of BBS was to explore the potential of behavior-based safety services on the Chinese market and exloring the best ways for implementation (by identifying potential obstacles and investigating potential benefits in terms of safety improvements and cost reductions). Both projects have been assessed by the CTS board to have achieved their purpose and goals.

Expected results and effects

All experiments in HMI project show that categories of critical traffic scenarios are similar between China and other developed countries, but details and percentage of their distribution are very different (where the details play an important role in the causation of traffic accidents). In the BBS project the coaching reduced significantly the safety-related event rate and partly the fuel cost. Regarding accident analysis, the main factor behind the rear-end events is the adoption of very small safety margins. Altogether, the effects of this project are expected to be achieved.

Planned approach and implementation

In the HMI project, initial research indicated that scenarios less frequent in other countries play a bigger role in China. The next step identified the most suitable/applicable scenarios to be used in the simulator study and a simulator validation study was carried out to decide which WP the project would continue with. BBS used the methodology developed by DriveCam, i.e. a simplified naturalistic collection method which gives feedback on the driver´s behavior in traffic. The data collected was also used to increase knowledge about the main factors contributing to accidents.