Field Studies to Investigate Safety Distance Violation with a Low-cost Observation System

Statistics show that safety distance violation is a major cause of traffic accidents with reasons including high volume of traffic, aggressive driving, inattention/distraction and, in particular, an underestimation of braking distances at certain speeds [2]. To sort out this important safety problem, modern premium cars are equipped with adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems. Nevertheless, the majority of consumer cars is still not provided with such a system and a later retrofit is often impossible. In this work, we are picking up on that issue and introducing a low-cost warning system based on simple distance measurements. The implementation on a Smartphone and preliminary user studies have shown that such a system is capable of real-time traffic observation and feedback to the driver (in the form of bimodal visual and auditory warnings). Study results further suggest that its application enhances the perception of minimal inter-car distances and, with it, improves road safety. Future work includes performance and accuracy improvements as well as a large scale field test.