Abstract

As the world transitions towards driverless mobility, stakeholders seek to ensure that at high-speed road sections, key transportation outcomes (safety and travel efficiency) are not unduly impaired by this evolution. High-speed operations place demanding constraints on every aspect of the driving automation stack because the spatial extent that must be perceived and the temporal urgency of response both scale unfavorably with velocity. Through a review of literature and a short documentation of racetrack experiences, the present study sheds light on the challenges associated with the prospective deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) at high-speed road corridors. This is done by developing insights inferred from published literature which in some cases include documented evidence of the lessons learned from autonomous racing events. This is done from the perspective of the AV functional modules and human-machine interaction (HMI) aspects. Regarding the AV functional modules, the study identifies several high-speed related challenges in the areas of perception and sensing, localization and mapping, prediction and situation awareness, path planning, vehicle control, and compute resources. Then, regarding the various HMI aspects, the study identifies high speed related challenges in the areas of takeover and handover dynamics, driver state and readiness monitoring, information presentation and cognitive load, trust calibration and explainability, external HMI and road-user communication challenges, and ethical and behavioral predictability. The study also throws light on the interrelationships between AV module-related operational limitations and HMI challenges at high speed, in at least three ways: high speed leaves a very short time budget for sensing, deciding, and action; the technical difficulties associated with the AV functional modules propagate directly into HMI difficulty; HMI sophistication may be competing with the AV modules for limited computing resources. To mitigate the AV module and HMI challenges encountered by AVs at high-speed road sections, the study develops recommendations regarding standards (on road infrastructure standards, sensors, and cyber infrastructure), safety validation, seamless and efficient integration of ADS components, human-centered systems and system-of-systems considerations. These recommendations can help inform AV module and HMI design, AV-cognizant infrastructure design and management, and AV-related policymaking to support AV operations at high-speed public roads.

Keywords

Autonomous vehicles, High speed, Racing, Human-machine interactions; Human factors

DOI

10.5703/1288284318713

Date of this Version

9-2026

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