Using a Reaction Time Model for Determining a Collision Avoidance System's Brake Timing*

To further improve passengers’ safety, novel driver assistance systems are able to avoid a collision by triggering an active braking. However, at high relative speeds between the ego vehicle and the potential opponent vehicle, the collision-avoiding emergency braking has to be initiated at a point of time where the driver is still able to resolve the situation by overtaking or swerving. This causes a trade-off between collision avoidance and collision mitigation when specifying the system's parameters. By integrating a reaction time model and hence the driver into the situation's analysis, this trade-off can be reduced. For that purpose, an appropriate method using data from additional lateral and rear sensors is presented within this paper. In conclusion, its performance is evaluated and discussed using test data.