Collision Avoidance as a Game of Co-ordination

Abstract

The literature of the recent past concerned with the collision avoidance regulations cannot be regarded as the model of rational scientific discussion. Subjective arguments based on personal experience of particular situations and very general mathematical analyses are pitted together without any generally accepted criteria by which to judge them. Obviously both mathematics and experience have great relevance to this geometrically simple, but operationally involved, problem. One step nearer a rational optimization of a set of regulations defining action during collision avoidance would be a formalization of the criteria a successful rule of the road must meet, and of the operational difficulties it faces. The present regulations, for instance, suffer from several logical inconsistencies which are difficult to describe in simple mathematical terms.