Collision Avoidance Warning for Safe Lane Change

Lane change (LC) is a voluntary maneuver that allows drivers to enter into a lane that suits their requirements and comfort. A safe LC process requires the driver to assess its neighborhood traffic in its original and target lanes before undertaking the maneuver. An erroneous assessment by LC vehicle or neighboring vehicles may result in an incorrect maneuver that can result in a collision. In the present paper, SVM (Support Vector Machine) is used for long term forecast of the lane change trajectory using the past state of the vehicle and its neighboring vehicles. Results with actual field data indicate that SVM is able to predict LC trajectory with sufficient accuracy. This collision can be prevented if the future LC trajectory can be forecast and the maneuver is executed only if it is predicted to safe. The dashboard may be equipped with warning may be displayed to warn of an unsafe LC maneuver. If driver persists with the unsafe maneuver, an automatic cruise control (ACC) may take over to abort the procedure.