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Killer Tailgating: Recommendation of Traveling Intervals between Consecutive Motor Vehicles for Rear-end Collision Avoidance

  • Research Article - Civil Engineering
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Abstract

Rear-end collisions are the most common type of automobile collision in modern traffic situations, and they have attracted much concern from both traffic safety engineers and travelers. In many cases, however, research that has focused on whether cars follow each other too closely has provided only a narrow insight into human factors. Therefore, this paper offers a basic method to estimate the emergency braking distance of passenger vehicles with respect to the following interval that should be kept as a “gap” between two consecutive vehicles moving in a lane. Four phases of the overall braking process are summarized—the reaction lag, deceleration by the vehicle engine, deceleration by the brake system and full deceleration—and equations are developed to describe the minimal traveling interval between consecutive arrivals, which varies with the pavement conditions, traveling speed and traffic intensities. Since traffic is not constant and probabilistic laws are involved, a Poisson distribution model is presented to estimate the probability of vehicles passing a fixed point within a given interval, so as to assess the risk-taking level of a traffic platoon. Two numerical examples show that vehicles on wet roads have braking distances longer than that suggested by the two-second rule. In addition, the level of risk taking in higher intensity traffic is unexpectedly higher, which could be interpreted as motorists behaving more aggressively and more likely to accept shorter following distances and higher speeds because they believe that they have the ability to swerve to avoid a collision.

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Abbreviations

V 0 :

Vehicle’s traveling speed in a platoon (km/h)

V 10 :

Leading vehicle speed proposed by Lee et al. (km/h)

V 20 :

Following vehicle speed proposed by Lee et al. (km/h)

V 1 :

Speed at point B2 in braking (m/s)

V 2 :

Speed at point C2 in braking (m/s)

φ :

Pavement’s adhesion coefficient

g :

Gravitational acceleration (m/s2)

J 1 :

Deceleration of leading vehicle (m/s2)

J 2 :

Deceleration of following vehicle (m/s2)

J max :

Maximum deceleration in braking (m/s2)

k :

Deceleration change rate (m/s3), taken as J max/t 2 here

L s1 :

Emergency braking distance of leading vehicle (m)

L s2 :

Emergency braking distance of following vehicle (m)

L ss :

Safe stopping interval between consecutive vehicles (m)

L v :

Safe following interval (m)

t 0 :

Reaction lag time (s), taken as 2 s here

t 1 :

Deceleration time by vehicle engine (s), taken as 0.56 s here

t 2 :

Deceleration time by brake system (s), taken as 0.2 s here

t 3 :

Full deceleration time (s)

l 0 :

Braking distance between O and A2 (m)

l 1 :

Braking distance between A2 and B2 (m)

l 2 :

Braking distance between B2 and C2 (m)

l 3 :

Braking distance between C2 and D2 (m)

t r :

Driver reaction time (s)

K :

Traffic density (vehicles/km)

Q :

Traffic intensity (vehicles/h)

p :

Occurrence probability of an event

n :

Total events of possible occurrence

m :

Observed number of following intervals less than L v

τ :

Short time interval (s)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Highway, Chang’an University, P. O. Box 487, Middle Section of South 2 Ring Rd., 710064, Xi’an, China

    Yong-gang Wang & Kuan-min Chen

  2. Faculty of Transportation Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650224, China

    Li-wei Hu

Authors
  1. Yong-gang Wang
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  2. Kuan-min Chen
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  3. Li-wei Hu
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Correspondence to Yong-gang Wang.

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Wang, Yg., Chen, Km. & Hu, Lw. Killer Tailgating: Recommendation of Traveling Intervals between Consecutive Motor Vehicles for Rear-end Collision Avoidance. Arab J Sci Eng 37, 619–630 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-012-0200-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-012-0200-y

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