Come together: an exploration on social driving behaviour of automated vehicles

Diane Cleij; Rins de Zwart; Reinier J. Jansen

doi:10.55329/wgem5787

Authors

Diane Cleij SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7473-5980
Rins de Zwart SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5467-2051
Reinier J. Jansen SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2706-1455

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55329/wgem5787

Keywords:

automated vehicles, interview study, social driving behaviour, technological capabilities

Abstract

Interaction between road users is a fundamental part of the traffic system. The advent of automated vehicles (AVs) has given rise to requirements for interactions between AVs and other road users, expressed in high-level terms like ‘demonstrate anticipatory behaviour’, ‘not confusing other road users’, and ‘being predictable and manageable for other road users’. Operationalizing these social driving behaviours requires social science knowledge on human interaction. However, translating social driving behaviour requirements unambiguously to the engineering domain necessitates that social scientists have a rudimentary understanding of the language of engineers (and vice versa). The present study seeks to accommodate interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and engineers by providing insight into current AV technological capabilities with regards to social driving behaviour and road safety, and their development in the near future. To this end, an exploratory interview study was performed with 7 engineers with backgrounds in industry, academia, research institutes, and/or vehicle authorities. The engineers provided several real-world examples of implications of AV algorithms on social driving behaviour. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in clusters of themes relating to the product development process: requirements (i.e., societal, legal, customers), development (i.e., process, implementation), and evaluation (i.e., assessment, monitoring). Choices made in each of these phases appear to influence the final behaviour of automated vehicles in traffic. Knowledge on social driving behaviour and its impact on traffic safety can guide these choices to ensure safe operation of AVs within the social environment of traffic.

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Author Biographies

Diane Cleij, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands

Dr. Diane Cleij is a researcher at SWOV institute for Road Safety Research. She received her PhD at Delft University of Technology, faculty of Aerospace Engineering, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. Her research interests include human behaviour, automated vehicles, their interaction in the real world and how this can be modelled and assessed.

CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Rins de Zwart, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands

Rins de Zwart, MSc, is a researcher at SWOV institute for Road Safety Research. He studied applied cognitive psychology at Leiden University. His research covers human factors, interactions between automated vehicles and other road users, behavioural adaptations to autonomous vehicles and applications of situational awareness.

CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Reinier J. Jansen, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, the Netherlands

Dr. Reinier Jansen is a senior researcher at SWOV institute for Road Safety Research. In 2017, he received his PhD at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. His research interests cover human factors, interactions with automated vehicle technology, HMI design, analysis of naturalistic driving data, and, recently, conflict observation techniques to study vulnerable road user safety at intersections.

CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

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