A Framework for the Evaluation of System Safety Benefits of Intelligent Cruise Control Systems

This paper describes a framework for assessing the system safety impacts of an Adaptive or Intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) system. This framework incorporates a time-to-collision model that is developed from vehicle headway, speed, and acceleration data that are typically gathered as part of field operational tests. Specifically, the framework combines car-following models with vehicle deceleration and acceleration constraints to compute instantaneous rear-end time-tocollision estimates. These instantaneous time-to-collision estimates are then translated into an accident risk estimate that is accumulated over the entire trip. The proposed approach can be applied directly to field data that are typically gathered as part of field operational tests. In addition, the proposed approach can be easily incorporated within microscopic traffic simulation models.