Connected vehicles improve travel time through intersections, but automated vehicles without connectivity can slow it down due to safety programming. Research emphasizes the importance of vehicle connectivity and interaction with traffic-control systems to achieve both safety and efficient travel.
“There are two significant reasons that people are interested in automated vehicles – improving passenger safety and reducing travel time,” says Ali Hajbabaie, first author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering at“There is a lot of research showing that automated vehicles can improve safety.
“Because of their programming, AVs are assumed to move more cautiously compared to human drivers,” Hajbabaie says. “Their safety stems, in part, from their being programmed to drive conservatively. CVs and CAVs are designed to receive information about the future state of traffic lights and adjust their speeds to avoid stopping at intersections. As a result, the movement of CVs and CAVs is expected to be smoother – and have a lower number of stops – than HVs and AVs.
One clear takeaway was that the higher the percentage of CVs and CAVs, the greater the intersection capacity. In other words, when more vehicles on the road were connected, more vehicles could flow through the intersection more quickly. Higher capacity also means that, on average, you have fewer vehicles sitting in line at a red light.