Impact of autonomous truck implementation: rutting and highway safety perspectives

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the effect of the autonomous trucks on distresses of asphalt concrete (AC) pavement and determine the influence of the induced distresses on traffic safety factors in wet weather conditions. Two scenarios – the baseline and autonomous scenarios were simulated by the standard deviation of normally distributed truck traffic loading. Compared to baseline, all autonomous simulations have a negative impact on AC rutting, and corresponding skid resistance and hydroplaning potential. A graphical relationship has been proposed to obtain a design threshold value for hydroplaning speed of a standard tire, water film depth, and autonomous truck speed. This was proposed to remove the contradiction between hydroplaning speed and accumulated rutting with increasing truck speed. The placement of all autonomous trucks in a certain low-temperature period of a day was found to be beneficial for reducing asphalt pavement rutting and might bring improvement in highway safety issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomous trucks
• rutting
• skid resistance
• hydroplaning potential
• improvement of pavement performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).