Foresight Safety: Sharing Drivers’ State among Connected Road Users

When drivers approach a potentially critical situation, they tend to glance over drivers of neighboring vehicles to gather a mutual understanding of the respective states and intentions. Then, experienced drivers can take quick decisions and prevent the onset of a danger. Yet, such a safety-effective behavior finds no equals in current automated driving, although the technologies to build a similar solution are already available. Therefore, it is important to investigate the effects of sharing drivers’ state among road users to understand the potential benefit for pre-critical situations. A networked simulators study was performed involving two drivers in a cut-in maneuver. Results indicate that when a driver is notified that the driver in the adjacent vehicle is distracted, the preferred reaction is to change lane, putting more space between the respective vehicles. Such a preventive action should therefore become the target behavior for automated vehicles capable of a human-like driving style.