DRIFT: Driving Risk Inference via Field Transmission for Human-like Autonomous Driving

Abstract: Risk fields offer spatially structured alternatives to scalar safety metrics. However, hand-crafted static risk field models struggle with occlusion and topology-driven propagation. We present DRIFT, a spatiotemporal risk field governed by an advection-diffusion-reaction partial differential equation (PDE), with an optional telegrapher term. DRIFT draws on three sources: anisotropic Gaussian kernels to capture velocity-induced risk, occlusion-aware latent hazards behind large vehicles, and topology-coupled merge-zone conflict pressure. We further introduce field-centric evaluation metrics to complement the existing Surrogate Safety Measures (SSMs), including Lane-Change Risk Differential, Temporal Anticipation Index, Occlusion Sensitivity Index, and Occlusion Response Latency. Experiments on real-world traffic datasets show that DRIFT reduces occlusion response latency and lowers the near-collision rate under occlusion compared with selected baselines in synthetic scenarios.