As fully automated cars become popular, signal waiting at intersection disappears and traffic congestion is eliminated, so efficiency is improved

GoogleYaBaiduThe automated driving car, whose technology is steadily increasing steadily since the start of the public road driving test, is expected to transform the road traffic situation in the near future. When the automatic driving car becomes widespread, not only is it no longer necessary to drive by grasping the steering wheel, but also a great merit such as being drastically reduced by traffic accident can be expected, but not only it is not necessary to stop at the intersection, and traffic congestion It was found that there is a possibility that it can be resolved.

PLOS ONE: Revisiting Street Intersections Using Slot-Based Systems
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149607

The Scary Efficiency of Autonomous Intersections - IEEE Spectrum
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/the-scary-efficiency-of-autonomous-intersections

The automatic driving car can not only run autonomously by judging the surrounding situation but also receive commands from the transportation system and communicate with surrounding automatic driving cars so as to realize harmonious traffic rules It is considered to be possible. The research team of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has released the following movies that explained the behavior at possible intersections in case of an automatic driving car. When you see this movie, you can see that it is not necessary to temporarily stop the automatic driving car just by decelerating at the intersection.

Light Traffic | MIT Senseable City Lab - YouTube


When a human being grasps a steering wheel and drives, traffic lights are introduced at the intersection to prevent accidents, and at the crossroads, which is the simplest intersection, on either side it is necessary to stop with a red light.


On the other hand, in the world with only the automatic driving car, when approaching the intersection, it decelerates automatically depending on the situation of the front and rear cars, right and left cars, can enter the intersection without passing, and can pass through. By not pausing, the waiting time at the intersection is almost eliminated, and a system without traffic jam is completed.


The upper is the world of automatic driving car and the lower is the real world. The car that stops is displayed in red, and it is obvious at a traffic system that needs to be temporarily stopped by traffic lights that there is a lot of waste.


This is an illustration of the intersection system of fully automatic driving car. In the case of entering an intersection, if there is no car crossing the left or right or a car turning left or right from the front, it is possible to pass through the intersection as it is. Also, if you have an automobile that is likely to collide from the front and the right and left, you can overcome that car by automatically decelerating, so you do not have to pause all cars entering the intersection. Furthermore, by not pausing, it is also far superior from the viewpoint of energy efficiency.


Some automobiles are forced to temporarily stop when the number of lanes increases, but an efficient intersection system "ASCII", which does not cause traffic congestion as a whole, far exceeds the signal system Efficiency can be realized. By looking at the following movie, you can understand what kind of thing ASBC is in harmony with the automatic driving car.

Untitled - Vimeo -


ASBC which does not cause such traffic congestion is easy to understand if we imagine the air traffic control system. If there are central controllers who control which vehicles can enter the intersection and can not enter, it is possible to achieve very high efficiency as a whole.

According to MIT's research, when a car enters the crossroad every two seconds, a general traffic signal system introduces ASBC with only an automatic driving car, whereas a delay of 99 seconds occurs per car If you do, the delay time can be reduced to 2.5 seconds per one. There is a possibility that wasteful time can be eliminated by passing through the intersection.

Stopping at an intersection will induce traffic congestion, not only to stop economic activity but also frustrating drivers and occasionally causing collision accidents. ASBC has the possibility to eliminate the disadvantage of the traffic signal system at the intersection, but it is a prerequisite that all vehicles on the road are automatic driving cars in order to realize.