Analyzing the Takeover Performance of Drivers with Different Speed Stability Habits

Takeover is actually a manual driving task that may be influenced by the driver’s manual driving habits. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of drivers’ speed stability habits on the takeover performance in level 3 automation. The experiments consisted of two parts: a manual car-following experiment and an automated driving takeover experiment. Based on the data of standard deviation of vehicle speed collected in the manual driving experiment, 27 drivers were divided into two groups: stability and instability. Then the automated driving takeover experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of the speed stability habit (stability, instability) on takeover performance in different takeover time budgets (7 s, 5 s) and in combination with a visual secondary task. Researchers found that the speed stability habit significantly affected takeover time and maximum lateral acceleration. The drivers with the speed instability habit had significantly shorter takeover time in emergency situations, and their lateral driving stability after takeovers was better. The results indicate that the drivers with speed instability habit in daily manual driving have better takeover performance under emergency takeovers. The reason for the phenomenon may be that the drivers with speed instability habit may encounter more emergency situations in their daily driving, and their rich experience in handling emergency situations helps them perform better in emergency takeovers. This research can provide an experimental basis for the design of personalized level 3 automated driving systems. In the future, level 3 automated driving systems should focus on the drivers with speed stability habit.