Management of Transitions of Control in Mixed Traffic with Automated Vehicles

Automated vehicles can currently drive in different traffic conditions, but there still exist situations that automated vehicles cannot handle efficiently and safely. When an automated vehicle reaches its functional system limits or encounters unexpected situations, a transition of control is needed to handover vehicle control to the driver. A transition of control requires that the driver obtains the full situation awareness and takes control of the primary driving tasks. Transition of control is expected to negatively impact traffic efficiency and safety. The latter impacts will be especially relevant in areas where multiple automated vehicles need to perform a transition of control simultaneously. To efficiently and safely deal with multiple transitions of control, novel traffic management measures are needed. These measures should take into account not only the automated vehicles, but also the overall traffic stream. This paper proposes different traffic management measures supported by C-ITS and designed to handle transitions of control in mixed traffic scenarios, where automated, connected and conventional vehicles coexist.