In November 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation entered into a cooperative research agreement with an industry team led by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in a multi-year program to develop and test an integrated, vehicle-based, crash warning system that addresses rear-end, roadway departure, and lane-change/merge crashes for light vehicles and heavy commercial trucks. The program being carried out under this agreement is known as the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems program.

This report presents the methodology and results of the independent evaluation of a prototype integrated crash warning system for light vehicles as part of the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems initiative of the United States Department of Transportation's Intelligent Transportation System program. The system integrates rear-end crash, curve-speed warning, lane change crash, and lane departure warning functions. The goals of the independent evaluation are to assess the safety impact, gauge driver acceptance, and characterize the capability of the integrated safety system. The evaluation is based on naturalistic driving data collected from a field operational test using 108 subjects who drove 16 passenger vehicles equipped with a prototype integrated safety system and a data acquisition system. The test subjects accumulated over 213,000 miles during a 12-month period throughout parts of southeast Michigan. For each driver, the test period was divided into a 12 day baseline condition with the system disabled and a 28 day treatment condition with the system enabled to compare the effect of the system on driving performance. The results of the analysis suggest that driving with the integrated safety system improves driver behavior and increases driver safety, that drivers feel that the system provides a safety benefit, and that the system alerts had a high degree of accuracy. This report delineates the methodology of the different analyses and discusses their results.

The Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems (IVBSS) program is a five-year, two-phase cooperative research program being conducted by an industry consortium led by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). The goal of the program is to assess the safety benefits and driver acceptance associated with a prototype integrated crash warning system designed to address rearend, roadway departure, and lane change/merge crashes for light vehicles and heavy commercial trucks. This report describes accomplishments and progress made during the third year of the program (June 2008 to May 2009) and activities planned for the following year. Accomplishments detailed in this report include making refinements to the integrated crash warning system, conduct of additional verification testing and extended pilot tests, the analysis of data, and the construction of the fleet of 26 research vehicles.

This report identifies crash imminent test scenarios based on common pre-crash scenarios for integrated vehicle-based safety systems that alert the driver of a light vehicle or a heavy truck to an impending rear-end, lane change, or run-off-road crash. Pre-crash scenarios describe vehicle movements and critical events immediately prior to the crash. The General Estimates System (GES) crash database was queried to distinguish common pre-crash scenarios for light vehicles (2003 GES) and heavy trucks (2000-2003 GES) in terms of their frequency of occurrence. Analysis of two-vehicle rear-end crashes revealed four dominant scenarios that accounted for 97 percent of light-vehicle crashes and 95 percent of heavy-truck crashes in which the subject vehicle was striking. Four scenarios were also identified from an analysis of two-vehicle lane change crashes, comprising 65 percent of light-vehicle crashes and 76 percent of heavy-truck crashes in which the subject vehicle was encroaching onto another vehicle in adjacent lanes. There were five single-vehicle, run-off-road scenarios representing 63 percent of light-vehicle crashes and 83 percent of heavy-truck crashes, excluding crashes caused by vehicle failure or evasive maneuver. An additional set of scenarios is proposed to address multiple threats from near simultaneous critical events. This report also provides a statistical description of individual scenarios in terms of their environmental factors, roadway geometry, and speed conditions.

The purpose of the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety System (IVBSS) project is to evaluate the potential safety benefits and driver acceptance of an integrated set of crash-warning technologies installed on both heavy truck and light vehicle platforms. IVBSS is an integrated set of technologies that is intended to help the driver avoid road-departure, rear-end, and lane-change crashes by providing occasional crash alerts and advisories to enhance the drivers awareness of the driving situation. This document proposes functional requirements for the system to be developed and field-tested on the light vehicle platform. These requirements are generated solely for the system created within this project, and are not intended to be prescriptive for integrated crash systems developed outside the project. The light vehicle platform encompasses passenger vehicles including sedans, sport-utility vehicles, light trucks, minivans, and vans. The IVBSS on the light vehicle platform addresses the following crash types: (1) Road departures due to unintended lateral drift, (2) Road departures due to travel through curves at excessive speeds, (3) Rear-end crashes, and (4) Lane-change and merge crashes due to unsafe lane movements.

"This report presents results from a series of on-road verification tests performed to determine the readiness of a prototype integrated warning system to advance to field testing, as well as to identify areas of system performance that should be improved prior to the start of the field test planned for 2009. Data was collected from tests conducted on public roads using an International 8600 heavy truck equipped with the prototype safety system. The prototype system provides forward crash warning (FCW), lane change merge (LCM), and lane departure warning (LDW) functions managed by an arbitration function to address multiple crash threats. The objectives of the on-road tests were to operate the heavy truck in an uncontrolled driving environment to measure the system's susceptibility to nuisance alerts, assess alerts in perceived crash situations, and evaluate the system availability. Test results revealed significant improvement in system performance throughout the series of tests conducted between September 2007 and March 2008. Based on positive results from the track-based verification tests conducted in February and these on-road test, it was recommended that the heavy-truck platform proceed to field testing in Phase II. Adjustments to alert timing were recommended to further reduce the number of FCW and LDW nuisance alerts."--Technical report documentation page.

The purpose of the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety System (IVBSS) project is to evaluate the potential safety benefits and driver acceptance of an integrated set of crash-warning technologies installed on both heavy truck and light vehicle platforms. IVBSS is an integrated set of technologies that is intended to help the driver avoid road-departure, rear-end, and lane-change crashes by providing occasional crash alerts and advisories to enhance the driver’s awareness of the driving situation. This document proposes functional requirements for the system to be developed and field-tested on the heavy truck platform. These requirements are generated solely for the system created within this project, and are not intended to be prescriptive for integrated crash systems developed outside the project. The heavy truck platform encompasses class 8 trucks operating with one trailer or without a trailer. The IVBSS on the heavy truck platform addresses the following crash types: · Road departures due to unintended lateral drift, · Rear-end crashes, and· Lane-change and merge crashes due to unsafe lane movements by the heavy truck.