抄録
This paper investigates effect of AHS (Advanced Cruise-Assist Highway Systems) service using VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) on driver behavior and safety awareness, through experiment with a driving simulator. In this AHS service, when drivers of vehicles behind do not notice an incident such as stopping vehicle or rearmost congestion at blind curve sections of urban expressway, 3-media VICS-enable in-vehicle navigation unit provides them information to avoid collision based on communication between road and vehicle. In this study, such road environment and traffic condition around drivers were generated by using a motion-based driving simulator which had a real car body, seven 150-inch screens covering 330-degree field of view, 3-media VICS-enable in-vehicle navigation unit in the cockpit. Twenty-nine subjects were participated and instructed to perform based on their usual safe driving skill in urban expressway. Three types of visual content of AHS information were examined from the viewpoint of driving maneuver, visual behavior and safety awareness. Subjective evaluation was also conducted in terms of understanding of information, surprise and maneuver. The results of the experiment indicate that AHS service is more effective to decrease possibility of collision than usual driving without AHS service, in terms of timing of releasing accelerator pedal, applying brake pedal and improvement of safety awareness, although it was observed that understanding of AHS information varied among the subjects. Especially, based on the result of this study, simple figure of AHS information is more effective than text message in order to avoid such a collision safely.
