Predicting the impact on road safety of an intersection AEB at urban intersections. Using a novel virtual test field for the assessment of conflict prevention between cyclists/pedelecs and cars

With the rise of Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS) and the introduction of Highly Automated Driving (HAD), understanding and predicting road traffic accidents becomes increasingly important. Especially for the assessment of HAD/ADAS systems and of road safety, the precise prediction of the system’s impact on the occurrence of road traffic accidents is essential. Traffic simulations, as one option of virtual assessment, enable the assessment of safety systems in virtual test fields. By modelling the human driver, it is possible to simulate and predict future accident constellations and accident severities. In addition, the influence of vehicle factors, such as the presence of safety systems or their characteristics, on the occurrence of accidents can be investigated. This article elucidate virtual assessment by executing the whole procedure for an automatic emergency braking (AEB) system capable to detect cyclists at urban intersections. The authors implement a new driver behaviour model (DReaM) to predict road traffic accidents at urban intersections. Using the AEB as an example, the influence of different sensor opening angles on crash frequency is investigated by varying the sensors in three steps: 100°, 180°, and 210°. A total of 240,000 situations are simulated of which 6,674 are crashes. Within the two investigation scenarios, the crash frequency is reduced by up to 88.43%, or 93.92% by introducing the AEB system. The article shows that virtual assessment enables the prediction of new safety systems regarding road safety at early design stages. In addition, different system characteristics can be compared efficiently, e.g., the sensor opening angle. •Development of a new driver behaviour model “DReaM” for urban intersections•Virtual safety assessment through simulation studies with stochastic parameter variations•Execution of a sensitivity analysis of different characteristics of a safety system•Presentation of all individual steps for virtual safety assessments•Assessment of an AEB for vulnerable road users (VRU) at urban intersection