Helping Autonomous Vehicles at Signalized Intersections

The conventional way of operating vehicles is being revolutionized. In the coming years, driverless “self-driving” vehicles will be traveling on roadways alongside human-driven vehicles.

Self-driving vehicles are currently at several stages of development. This development could range from a stage where the driver completely controls the vehicle at all times to a stage where the vehicle itself controls all the operations from the start to stop.

Human error accounts for the majority of vehicle collisions. Therefore, driverless vehicles could have great potential for improving safety, mobility and air quality at a signalized intersection.

With self-driving vehicles, human behaviour does not play any role when the vehicle makes decisions to stop or perform a turning manoeuvre. On the other hand, signal timing parameters (e.g. duration of green, amber and red clearance times) are calculated taking into consideration human perception and reaction time. Will the existing methods of calculating signal timing parameters suffice for the needs of self-driving vehicles? Should there be consultation and/or collaboration between road authorities and the manufacturers of self-driving vehicles?

In this paper the signal timing parameters will be reviewed taking into consideration both human-driven vehicles and self-driving vehicles, in the interest of safety and efficiency at signalized intersections.