Ethical Decision Making Under Time Pressure: An Online Study

Although research in Psychology and Philosophy indicates people’s preference for utilitarian ethics, how people respond to ethically fraught scenarios under time pressure is unclear. In this online experiment, 61 participants viewed videos of a simulated automated vehicle (AV) as it drove in the right lane on a four-lane road and were instructed to intervene if they thought that the vehicle should move to the left lane. At a crosswalk, five pedestrian avatars appeared one, two, or three seconds before projected impact either in the path of the vehicle or the left lane, with a single pedestrian appearing in the opposite lane half the time. Participants avoided the group of five (utilitarian response) but were more likely to veer into the group of five pedestrians at one second before impact than longer durations, violating utilitarian ethics under time pressure. This suggests limited ability to respond to ethical scenarios when taking over AV control at short notice.

Trajectory Planning of Autonomous Vehicle in Freeway Driving

This paper describes trajectory planning for an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) in the freeway path. Three types of driving modes are analyzed. First was free flow, this constitutes that moving at the desired speed is determined at the beginning of the movement. Second case was car following, when overtaking or lane-change was impossible, distance or speed adaptation is executed using the variable acceleration/deceleration strategy. Third case was lane change or overtaking. For lane change or overtaking paths, the 5th degree polynomial is used to create a curvilinear path to changes its path to the left lane and then returns to its default lane. The velocity and relative distances of cars are main factors for decision making. All proper driving decisions algorithm is introduced. According to autonomous car desired velocity, in the two driving cases (fast and slow desired velocity for AV) are studied by simulation and their results analyzed and compared with together.

The effect of traffic strategies on emissions

Air pollution and its relationship to the ecosystem and human life has always been the subject of a significant amount of study. The effect of highway air emissions on urban air quality has been studied for many years. This report contains a simulation of a single intersection in an urban area, using Arena®, a general purpose simulation program, and taking into account dynamic and stochastic considerations. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) emission factors for idling situations were used to measure the emission of carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxide (Nox) for the delay time. The simulation result predicts emission levels to be higher in a two-phase plan (unprotected left lane) with three different cycle times studied in this case (90, 120, and 140 seconds) compared to a three-phase plan (a protected left lane). However, the degree to which a two-phase plan is positively correlated with intersection cycle time suggests that a multi-faceted approach needs be taken in implementing modifications to reduce overall emissions.

The effect of traffic strategies on emissions

Air pollution and its relationship to the ecosystem and human life has always been the subject of a significant amount of study. The effect of highway air emissions on urban air quality has been studied for many years. This report contains a simulation of a single intersection in an urban area, using Arena®, a general purpose simulation program, and taking into account dynamic and stochastic considerations. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) emission factors for idling situations were used to measure the emission of carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxide (Nox) for the delay time. The simulation result predicts emission levels to be higher in a two-phase plan (unprotected left lane) with three different cycle times studied in this case (90, 120, and 140 seconds) compared to a three-phase plan (a protected left lane). However, the degree to which a two-phase plan is positively correlated with intersection cycle time suggests that a multi-faceted approach needs be taken in implementing modifications to reduce overall emissions.

Influence Range and Traffic Risk Analysis of Moving Work Zones on Urban Roads

There is a body of literature on the influence range and traffic risk of fixed work zones. However, relatively few studies have examined the effect of ubiquitous moving operating vehicles, such as road cleaners, on urban roads. The influence of low speed moving work zones on road traffic flow and traffic risk is still unclear. In this work, we used simulations to establish an urban expressway three lanes VISSIM model, and selected the road traffic volume and speed of the moving work zone as the independent variables. We analyzed the range of influence of the moving work zone on the rear vehicles in the left, middle and right lanes of the urban expressway and the traffic risk variation law caused by the moving work zone. The results show that the left lane was indirectly affected by the moving work zone when the traffic volume reached 2000 pcu/h. The influence of the moving work zone on the middle lane was controlled by the traffic volume and the speed of the moving work zone. Both the left and middle lanes were mainly impacted by vehicles changing lane from the right lane. Regardless of the traffic volume and the speed of the moving work zone change, the vehicles 200 m behind a moving work zone will be directly affected in the right lane. Furthermore, the average traffic risk is the highest within 50 m of the moving work zone in the right lane. When the traffic volume decreases and the speed of the moving work zone increases, the average traffic risk decreases gradually. These results provide a scientific basis for the operation and management of moving working vehicles on urban roads.

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP: A VERITABLE TOOL FOR NATIONAL TRANSFORMATION, PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

For sundry reasons, every human community is replete with aberrations of varying magnitude. Some aberrations become so through the criminalisation process by society, some other human acts are considered ontologically uncongenial to human nature. Driving on the left lane of the road in Nigeria, for example, is a traffic offence. It is so because Nigerian road traffic experts consider it convenient to keep right while driving, thereby criminalising driving on the left lane of the road. The aberration of driving on the left lane of the road cannot be said to be adorned with ontological colouration. The phenomenon of rape is considered an ontological aberration in this article and repugnant to human nature. Both the victim and the perpetrator of rape are exposed to social and psychological repercussions. Unfortunately, some of the repercussions on the victim of rape are unnecessary, as they are cosmetically imposed by society, and there is no necessary connection between the aberration and the social consequences. Some of the social and psychological consequences of the phenomenon of rape are considered in this work, and it is argued herein that the social consequences imposed on the victim of rape are unnecessary, and that they unnecessarily compound the traumas that the rape-victim suffers. It is, therefore, suggested herein that some cultural perceptions among most Nigerian tribes should be reviewed to ameliorate the repercussions of rape in the rape-victim.

A JURISPRUDENTIAL AND SOCIO-CULTURAL RECONSIDERATION OF THE RAPE-PHENONMENON

For sundry reasons, every human community is replete with aberrations of varying magnitude. Some aberrations become so through the criminalisation process by society, some other human acts are considered ontologically uncongenial to human nature. Driving on the left lane of the road in Nigeria, for example, is a traffic offence. It is so because Nigerian road traffic experts consider it convenient to keep right while driving, thereby criminalising driving on the left lane of the road. The aberration of driving on the left lane of the road cannot be said to be adorned with ontological colouration. The phenomenon of rape is considered an ontological aberration in this article and repugnant to human nature. Both the victim and the perpetrator of rape are exposed to social and psychological repercussions. Unfortunately, some of the repercussions on the victim of rape are unnecessary, as they are cosmetically imposed by society, and there is no necessary connection between the aberration and the social consequences. Some of the social and psychological consequences of the phenomenon of rape are considered in this work, and it is argued herein that the social consequences imposed on the victim of rape are unnecessary, and that they unnecessarily compound the traumas that the rape-victim suffers. It is, therefore, suggested herein that some cultural perceptions among most Nigerian tribes should be reviewed to ameliorate the repercussions of rape in the rape-victim.

Takeover Quality: Assessing the Effects of Time Budget and Traffic Density with the Help of a Trajectory-Planning Method

In highly automated driving, the driver can engage in a nondriving task but sometimes has to take over control. We argue that current takeover quality measures, such as the maximum longitudinal acceleration, are insufficient because they ignore the criticality of the scenario. This paper proposes a novel method of quantifying how well the driver executed an automation-to-manual takeover by comparing human behaviour to optimised behaviour as computed using a trajectory planner. A human-in-the-loop study was carried out in a high-fidelity 6-DOF driving simulator with 25 participants. The takeover required a lane change to avoid roadworks on the ego-lane while taking other traffic into consideration. Each participant encountered six different takeover scenarios, with a different time budget (5 s, 7 s, or 20 s) and traffic density level (low or medium). Results showed that drivers exhibited a considerably higher longitudinal and lateral acceleration than the optimised behaviour, especially in the short time budget scenarios. In scenarios of medium traffic density, the trajectory planner showed a moderate deceleration to let a vehicle in the left lane pass; many participants, on the other hand, did not decelerate before making a lane change, resulting in a dangerous emergency brake of the left-lane vehicle. In conclusion, our results illustrate the value of assessing human takeover behaviour relative to optimised behaviour. Using the trajectory planner, we showed that human drivers are unable to behave optimally in urgent scenarios and that, in some conditions, a medium deceleration, as opposed to a maximal or minimal deceleration, is optimal.