Modeling Speed Change Ratio While Driving Behind a Connected Cruise Control-Equipped Connected Vehicle

Connected vehicles have many promising applications which improve road safety. Thanks to vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, motorists can receive in-advance road information to better respond to hazardous situations and prevent severe collisions. As connected vehicles will likely share the road with human-driven vehicles in a transition period until full implementation, a continuous understanding of complex driver interactions with connected vehicles is needed. This study investigates the effect of introducing a connected cruise control-equipped vehicle supplemented with a crash warning system on the driver’s speed choice using a driving simulator. Participants were recruited to run the simulations in connected and non-connected environments. Advisory and warning messages via various delivery types were shared with the participants at different vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity lengths. The speed change ratio between the connected and non-connected environments was modeled using ordinal logistic regression. It was found that connectivity length, gender, education level, and years of driving experience have statistically significant effects on the speed change ratio at the 90% confidence level. Although the results are only valid to the study participant sample due to limitations in the collected sample, they draw insights into the human response to connected vehicles.