With progress in enabling autonomous cars to drive safely on the road, it is time to start asking how they should be driving. A common answer is that they should be adopting their users' driving style. This makes the assumption that users want their autonomous cars to drive like they drive - aggressive drivers want aggressive cars, defensive drivers want defensive cars. In this paper, we put that assumption to the test. We find that users tend to prefer a significantly more defensive driving style than their own. Interestingly, they prefer the style they think is their own, even though their actual driving style tends to be more aggressive. We also find that preferences do depend on the specific driving scenario, opening the door for new ways of learning driving style preference.
Defensiveness-aggressiveness is the most commonly used metric for defining driving style. Prior work refers to drivers as aggressive assertive versus defensive @cite_20 ; or mild versus moderate versus aggressive @cite_4 . In the Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI), Taubman-Ben-Ari identified four broad driving styles: (1) reckless and careless driving, characterized by, for example, higher speed; (2) anxious driving; (3) angry and hostile driving, characterized by more use of the horn and flash functionality; and (4) patient and careful driving @cite_2 . Similarly, Huysduynen categorized driving style as angry driving, anxious driving, dissociative driving, distress-reduction driving and careful driving style @cite_16 . Horswill provided a valuable distinction between skill and style in the context of driving behaviors @cite_11 . Hong @cite_7 differentiated styles in terms of defensiveness, as well as by propensity for violation of rules. Scherer defined driving style in terms of comfort @cite_23 . Lee @cite_17 analyzed lane changes as a function of its severity (degree to which the vehicle in the destination lane was cut off), urgency (how soon the lane change was needed), and type classification for the full population of 8,667 lane changes.
@cite_4 @cite_7 @cite_17 @cite_23 @cite_2 @cite_16 @cite_20 @cite_11
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Abstract Two studies were conducted in order to develop a multidimensional instrument of driving style. In Study 1, we developed a self-report scale assessing four broad domains of driving style—the multidimensional driving style inventory (MDSI). A factor analysis revealed eight main factors, each one representing a specific driving style—dissociative, anxious, risky, angry, high-velocity, distress reduction, patient, and careful. In addition, significant associations were found between the eight factors, on the one hand, and gender, age, driving history, and personality measures of self-esteem, need for control, impulsive sensation seeking, and extraversion, on the other. In Study 2, further associations were found between the eight driving style factors and measures of trait anxiety and neuroticism. The discussion focused on the validity and utility of a multidimensional conceptualization of driving style. The aim of this study was to validate the stability of the different factors of the Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI) [16], which was originally developed and validated with participants in different geographical areas of Israel. In this study, the questionnaire was distributed in the Netherlands and Belgium. A factor analysis of the data of 364 participants revealed five of the eight factors that resulted from the original factor analysis: Angry driving, Anxious driving, Dissociative driving, Distress-reduction driving, and Careful driving style. In addition, 24 items divided over the five factors seem to be stable compared to the 44 items divided over the eight factors of the original analysis. The factors revealed through the analysis of these data were used to determine driver profiles, consisting of one or two driving styles. The next step is to compare self-report data on driving style to actual driving behaviour. It is expected that autonomous vehicles capable of driving without human supervision will be released to market within the next decade. For user acceptance, such vehicles should not only be safe and reliable, they should also provide a comfortable user experience. However, individual perception of comfort may vary considerably among users. Whereas some users might prefer sporty driving with high accelerations, others might prefer a more relaxed style. Typically, a large number of parameters such as acceleration profiles, distances to other cars, speed during lane changes, etc., characterize a human driver's style. Manual tuning of these parameters may be a tedious and error-prone task. Therefore, we propose a learning from demonstration approach that allows the user to simply demonstrate the desired style by driving the car manually. We model the individual style in terms of a cost function and use feature-based inverse reinforcement learning to find the model parameters that fit the observed style best. Once the model has been learned, it can be used to efficiently compute trajectories for the vehicle in autonomous mode. We show that our approach is capable of learning cost functions and reproducing different driving styles using data from real drivers. Driving aggressively increases the risk of accidents. Assessing a person's driving style is a useful way to guide aggressive drivers toward having safer driving behaviors. A number of studies have investigated driving style, but they often rely on the use of self-reports or simulators, which are not suitable for the real-time, continuous, automated assessment and feedback on the road. In order to understand and model aggressive driving style, we construct an in-vehicle sensing platform that uses a smartphone instead of using heavyweight, expensive systems. Utilizing additional cheap sensors, our sensing platform can collect useful information about vehicle movement, maneuvering and steering wheel movement. We use this data and apply machine learning to build a driver model that evaluates drivers' driving styles based on a number of driving-related features. From a naturalistic data collection from 22 drivers for 3 weeks, we analyzed the characteristics of drivers who have an aggressive driving style. Our model classified those drivers with an accuracy of 90.5 (violation-class) and 81 (questionnaire-class). We describe how, in future work, our model can be used to provide real-time feedback to drivers using only their current smartphone.