Providing drivers with road-edge information to reduce road departure crashes in a military vehicle fleet

Abstract

A leading cause of military vehicle rollover crashes is that one or more wheels move into an area where the terrain falls away steeply or disappears, leading to vehicle rollover. Vehicle-mounted sensors will soon be capable of sensing such hazards in real time. This report addresses the design of a driver interface to provide information about such hazards in a timely and cogent manner in order to allow attentive, distracted, or drowsy drivers enough time and information to avoid the hazard. An interface that consists of an auditory warning and an optional supplementary overlay of the hazard on a driver’s eye view of the roadway is recommended. A set of equations are developed that indicate when the driver must begin applying either a pre-determined level of braking or a pre-determined level of added lateral acceleration to avoid a perceived hazard.