Implementation and Performance Evaluation of In-vehicle Highway Back-of-Queue Alerting System Using the Driving Simulator

This paper proposes a prototype in-vehicle highway back-of-queue alerting system that is based on an Android-based smartphone app, which is capable of delivering warning information to on-road drivers approaching traffic queues. To evaluate the effectiveness of this alerting system, subjects were recruited to participate in the designed test scenarios on a driving simulator. The test scenarios include three warning types (no alerts, roadside alerts, and in-vehicle auditory alerts), three driver states (normal, distracted, and drowsy), and two weather conditions (sunny and foggy). Driver responses related to vehicle dynamics data were collected and analyzed. The results indicate that on average, the drowsy state decreases the minimum time-to-collision by 1.6 seconds compared to the normal state. In-vehicle auditory alerts can effectively increase the driving safety across different combinations of situations (driver states and weather conditions), while roadside alerts perform better than no alerts.