Priority of Emergency Vehicle Dynamic Right-Of-Way Control Method in Networked Environment

Abstract

This paper proposes a dynamic right-of-way priority control approach for emergency vehicles (PDR-EVs) to improve their efficiency on basic road sections in the city based on a cooperative vehicle infrastructure system. Specifically, a movable physical function area was set in front of the EVs to prohibit connected vehicles (CVs) from entering a lane or to request them to change lanes to avoid a collision. Setting up a dynamic monitoring area at the EV’s front end affords real-time monitoring of the CV’s headway distribution in the inner lane. Moreover, a lane change request is sent when the CVs enter the buffer area, and the traversal search method predicts the optimal time and rate of speed to change the lane change and guides the CVs ahead of the EVs to merge into the target gap. Extensive simulations using the SUMO platform revealed that the priority of the dynamic right-of-way (PDR) control method reduced the average delay of the EVs by more than 70%, given that the road saturation did not exceed 0.8 and hardly increased the delay of the CVs (not more than 8%). Moreover, the simulations revealed that the long buffer area was suitable for low-volume conditions, and the short one was suitable for high-volume conditions. The proposed methodology fully employs the road space resources and enhances the EV’s operating efficiency on basic road sections while considering the CV’s operating efficiency.