Evaluation of an Advanced Driver-Assistance System to Reduce Pedestrian and Rear-End Crashes of Transit Vehicles

This paper reports on the results of an evaluation of a rear-end and pedestrian crash warning system installed on transit agency buses with the goal of collecting and providing information to help agencies make decisions about investing in such systems. The results from this evaluation indicate that the tested crash warning system had a positive effect on improving the reaction times to rear-end and pedestrian conflicts and on increasing the yield of drivers to pedestrians. The results from the evaluation also indicate improvement in driver behavior as reflected by the increase in the time headway between vehicles, reduction in the number of alerts for both rear-end and pedestrian crashes, and the reduction in the number of hard brake events. However, bus operators’ acceptance of the system seems to be low, pointing to the need for additional outreach and education of the drivers on the system and its effectiveness. The results from the return-on-investment analysis show that although installing the system on every bus of the transit agency may not be cost-effective, installing the devices on only the buses that operate on the high-crash bus routes is cost-effective.