Development of freeway-based test scenarios for applying new car assessment program to automated vehicles

As automated driving technology continues to develop, studies are being conducted to develop various scenarios for assessing the functional safety, failure safety, and mobility of automated vehicles (AVs). As the commercialization of AVs progresses, it is necessary to develop a set of test scenarios for new car assessment programs (NCAPs), so as to provide information on the safety and reliability of AVs to consumers. To provide valuable information regarding newly emerged AVs to consumers who are willing to purchase them, it is necessary to derive specific and well-defined test scenarios based on the safety-in-use. Accordingly, to apply NCAPs to AVs, this study established test scenarios targeting freeways where AVs were expected to be commercialized. To this end, based on freeway traffic accident data and opinions of traffic safety and AV experts, we derived possible dangerous situations when an AV is maintaining a lane on a freeway. Functional scenarios were defined based on the derived dangerous situations. The priority of the defined functional scenarios was set using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Accordingly, this study presents a logical and concrete scenario construction methodology for deriving the ranges and values of test parameters for functional scenarios.