Action Point Models of Human Driving Behaviour

Abstract

Action point models of human driving have been invented in the 1960ies (Todosiev and Barbosa, 1963; Todosiev, 1963; Michaelis, 1963)). They claim that a human driver controls his vehicle at certain instants in time (the action points) where acceleration changes abruptly, but is held constant between two action points. This is not exactly true, since the driver keeps constant the pressure to the car controls like the gas pedal, therefore acceleration might change due to changing air resistance or engine efficiency. Nevertheless, in the following acceleration will be regarded constant. In the late 1960 and early 1970 those models have been developed further into so called psycho-physical models (Evans, 1977; Wiedemann, 1974; Leutzbach and Wiedemann, 1986). There, so called perception thresholds have been claimed as the reason for the action points. It states, that a human driver is not capable to resolve e.g. very small speed differences, he reacts only if the speed difference has exceeded a certain minimum value, the threshold.