Modeling road user response timing in naturalistic traffic conflicts: A surprise-based framework

There is currently no established method for evaluating human response timing across a range of naturalistic traffic conflict types. Traditional notions derived from controlled experiments, such as perception-response time, fail to account for the situation-dependency of human responses and offer no clear way to define the stimulus in many common traffic conflict scenarios. As a result, they are not well suited for application in naturalistic settings. We present a novel framework for measuring and modeling response times in naturalistic traffic conflicts applicable to automated driving systems as well as other traffic safety domains. The framework suggests that response timing must be understood relative to the subject’s current (prior) belief and is always embedded in, and dependent on, the dynamically evolving situation. The response process is modeled as a belief update process driven by perceived violations to this prior belief, that is, by surprising stimuli. The framework resolves two key limitations with traditional notions of response time when applied in naturalistic scenarios: (1) The strong situation dependence of response timing and (2) how to unambiguously define the stimulus. Resolving these issues is a challenge that must be addressed by any response timing model intended to be applied in naturalistic traffic conflicts. We show how the framework can be implemented by means of a relatively simple heuristic model fit to naturalistic human response data from real crashes and near crashes from the SHRP2 dataset and discuss how it is, in principle, generalizable to any traffic conflict scenario. We also discuss how the response timing framework can be implemented computationally based on evidence accumulation enhanced by machine learning-based generative models and the information-theoretic concept of surprise.