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• Drivers on slip roads want vehicles on the target lane to decelerate. • Drivers in target lanes rate the behaviour of vehicles on slip roads ambiguously. • AVs are rated identically or even more positively than MVs with identical behaviour. • No different safety distance is kept from automated vehicles. • Results show that cross-border traffic between Germany and UK with AVs is feasible. • Intercultural aspects must still be considered in the development of AVs. To ensure safe and uninterrupted traffic flow, (semi-)automated vehicles must be capable of providing comprehensible and agreeable implicit communication cues to human drivers. This driving simulator study investigated the assessment of implicit communication at a motorway slip road through longitudinal driving dynamics (acceleration, deceleration, and maintaining speed). The second aim of the study was to determine whether expectations of automated vehicles are different from those of human drivers. And thirdly, we investigated whether these findings are country-specific or can be (partially) generalised to other countries. The perception of three means of communication in connection with the presence of a labelling as an automated vehicle (eHMI) was examined in two samples in Germany and England. 27 participants drove from a slip road onto the motorway and interacted with another vehicle. After a stretch on the motorway, they passed a second slip road on which there was a vehicle merging onto the participants lane. This was repeated six times to test all variables. After each situation, the perceived cooperativity and criticality was recorded, as well as the time headway (THW) to the other vehicle. This paper presents the findings from the UK sample and compares them with the German results, which were previously published. Results show, that when the cooperating vehicles are on the slip road, participants from both countries prefer this vehicle to decelerate. However, when participants themselves are on the slip road, expectations for vehicles on the target lane are ambiguous in the UK sample. Except for one aspect (perceived cooperativity of decelerating vehicles on the slip road), the perception of automated vehicles is similar to those of manual drivers. Also, UK participants do not maintain a different safety distance from these vehicles, while this is the case in the German sample. This paper contributes valuable insights into the cross-cultural evaluation of driving dynamics, shedding light on implications for the development and acceptance of automated vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Experimental study for a cooperative t-intersection deadlock scenario. • Testing of different approaching behaviours for designing automated vehicles. • In complex situations, drivers prefer to let their cooperation partners drive first. • Explicit Communication signals tend to be given more to the right than to the left. Abstract Mixed traffic between automatic guided cars and human road users makes it necessary to understand cooperative behaviour between road users in order to adapt automated behaviour to human expectations. Road traffic offers various challenges, one being cooperative situations, which are not regulated by law. For example a t-intersection in which one road user is driving straight forward and two road users are turning left. To solve this situation the road users have to cooperate with each other. Different kinds of approaching behaviours in such situations were generated and analyzed according to cooperation readiness, preference to drive first and perceived safety of the situation by means of an experiment. The results show that in complex situations – like the investigated scenario – human road users prefer not to drive first. Additionally a high cooperation readiness of the opposite driver combined with a defensive driving style received higher ratings in the “confidence of passing”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]