S T at Us of Nht S A' S Re Ar-end Crash Prevention Research Program

This paper provides an update on two cooperative research projects being conducted under the National Highway Trafic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Rear-End Crash Prevention Program. The first project is the General Motors-Ford Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP) Forward Collision Warning (FCW) work. Since 1995, this project has been aimed at defining and developing pre-competitive enabling elements to facilitate FCW system deployment. The second project is the General Motors-led Automotive Collision Avoidance System Field Operational Test (ACAS FOT), which aims to accelerate the deployment of active safety systems by integrating and field-testing vehicles outfitted with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Forward Collision Warning (FCW) systems. Results from the first CAMP FCW project played an important role in the development of the SAE J2400 Recommended Practice, “Human Factors in Forward Collision Warning Systems: Operating Characteristics and User Interface Requirements”. This paper discusses findings from the second CAMP FCW project, which was focused on evaluating and developing the FCW timing approach and examining drivers’ decision-making and avoidance maneuver behavior in rear-end crash scenarios. The closedcourse, test track methodology employed allows safely placing naive drivers in realistic rear-end crash scenarios so that driver behavior can be observed. The human factors experimentation and key results from this project will be discussed in this paper. During the ACAS FOT project, a small fleet of vehicles was built and given to lay drivers for their personal use. Each driver had a vehicle for approximately four weeks, three of which had both the ACC and FCW features enabled. The collected data provided objective information about how the subjects used the system and its impact on their driving behavior. It also includes extensive subjective information collected through questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. The system design, design and execution of the FOT, and highlights of results will be discussed in this paper.