A microsimulation approach for the impact assessment of a Vehicle-to-Infrastructure based Road Hazard Warning system

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) constitute technologies which enable vehicles to communicate with each other and with road infrastructure. Verification or testing is required for C-ITS applications, in order to assess their impact on traffic operation. In this work, a microscopic traffic simulation approach is used, to evaluate the impact of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) technologies in the context of a road traffic accident. Specifically, the methodology is implemented to explicitly models vehicles collisions, Road Hazard Warning (RHW), Emergency Electronic Brake Light (EEBL) warnings and the resulting driver behavior. Moreover, a new gap control mechanism is adopted, to improve safety by advising vehicles in hazard lane to increase their headways with respect to their preceding vehicle, so that they can avoid a collision. Perfect communication links to all vehicles are assumed. The study findings indicate that the proposed V2I hazard warning strategy has a positive impact on traffic flow safety and efficiency.