Decision making for road departure warning systems

This paper investigates development of onboard road departure warning systems. A new approach, called the variable rumble strip (VRBS), is proposed. It is an onboard electronic implementation of the static rumble strip where the warning threshold is allowed to vary according to the risk of vehicle road departure. Performance of the VRBS system is similar to that of the time-to-lane-crossing approach, but requires less sensor information, making it more feasible in a vehicle application. Performance is measured in terms of hits, misses, and false alarms based on a validation warning set comprised of either static rumble strip generated warnings or by subjective interpretation of the road departure criticality. The algorithms are tested on two-hour driving simulator runs by 12 drivers.