Evaluations of Driving Safety with Increasing Connected Vehicles on the Expressway: A Simulation-Driven Research

Abstract

Connected vehicles will gradually become important participants of expressways in the future. However, evaluations for driving safety when there are increasing connected vehicles on expressways are not sufficient. To address the issue, this research makes driving safety evaluations of ramp merging and vehicle following under low-visibility events, two typical V2X scenarios on expressways, through a SUMO simulation approach. The simulation is carried out based on the topology map of the Changtai Expressway, one of the leading V2X demonstration projects in China. Three indicators, namely ‘Number of Decelerations’, ‘Average Speed’, and ‘Number of Abnormal Acceleration’, are continually analyzed to evaluate driving safety on the expressway. The results show that the number of decelerations and abnormal acceleration generally decreases while the average travel speed gradually rises when the market share of connected vehicles grows. Therefore, the safety evaluation indicators perform better under a higher share of connected vehicles, which is encouraging in developing V2X on expressways.