Acceptance of truck platooning by professional drivers on German highways. A mixed methods approach.
Abstract Truck platoon driving is a current branch of automated driving, which has the potential to radically change the work routine of professional drivers. In a platoon system, one truck (semi-)automatically follows a lead truck with a reduced distance, which produces significant savings in fuel and enables better traffic flow. In a current application of truck platoon driving, the following vehicle operates at level-2 automation. Thus, the driver of the following truck merely has to supervise the semi-automated system, which takes over steering and speed control when engaged. Level-2 truck platoon driving had not been tested with professional drivers in real traffic before. We hypothesi…
Truck Platooning Under Real Traffic Conditions: First Insights on Behavioral Adaptations and Gap Preference of Professional Drivers.
Objective The aim of the study was to investigate (1) how different gap sizes are perceived by professional truck drivers under real traffic conditions and (2) whether semi-automated platoon driving leads to changes in driving behavior of subsequent manual driving. Background Platoon driving is a current branch in the development of automated driving in which two or more vehicles build a convoy. The lead vehicle is controlled manually while following vehicles are electronically coupled to it and drive semi-automated with small gaps in order to achieve a better traffic flow and potential fuel savings. Method In a real road experiment, 10 trained professional truck drivers completed a total o…
Public acceptance of semi-automated truck platoon driving. A comparison between Germany and California
Abstract Platooning technology aims at achieving fuel savings by reducing the distance between two or more electronically coupled vehicles. This technology has recently been tested on public highways with heavy trucks in Germany and California. The objective of this study is to assess the level of acceptance among other road users as well as influencing factors of acceptance. An online questionnaire was administered in Germany and California with a total of N = 536 participants. They received information about truck platoon driving (level-1 and level-2 automation) and answered questions about their attitudes towards the technology as well as their behavioral intention to cooperate with the …
Driver Situation Awareness and Perceived Sleepiness during Truck Platoon Driving–Insights from Eye-tracking Data
Truck platoon driving technology uses vehicle-to-vehicle communication to allow one truck to follow another in an automated fashion. The first vehicle is operated manually, the second vehicle is dr...