Accelerated Failure Time Model to Explore the Perception Response Times of Drivers in Simulated Car-Following Scenarios

Abstract

In the development of effective rear-end collision alarm systems, understanding the factors that influence the perception response times (PRT) of drivers is important for the design of a reasonable lead time for the warning (or intervention) of likely collisions. Previous studies have proposed different approaches for examining the impact of situational or individual factors on the PRT of drivers. However, unobserved heterogeneity has not been considered and neither has a duration-modeling approach been used, resulting in a lack of accurate estimation. The purpose of the present study was to explore the effect of the driving situation and individual differences on the PRT of drivers while also considering unobserved heterogeneity. A total of 101 participants were exposed to different levels of secondarily cognitive load and situational urgency in simulated d scenarios. Several accelerated failure time (AFT) duration models, both with and without heterogeneity, were developed to model the PRT of drivers, while factors related to driving situation and individual differences were incorporated. The results indicate that influential factors include age, working memory capacity (WMC), cognitive load, and initial time headway exerted significant effects on the PRT of drivers. The hazard rate changed by 14.4%, 22.6%, and 7.5% when age, cognitive load, and initial time headway changed by one unit, respectively. Furthermore, the hazard rate decreases by more than 20% for individuals with higher WMC compared with baseline individuals. These results suggest that the AFT model that considers unobserved heterogeneity can provide a more accurate estimation of the PRT compared to other duration models. These findings can be expected to provide a further understanding of drivers’ braking behaviors, which will contribute to the development of advanced driving assistant systems as well as safety assessments of in-vehicle information and communication technologies.