Abstract
Elderly people have lower visual acuity, and hearing ability, compared to those of young people and thus it is more difficult for them to avoid danger. Therefore, vehicles equipped with safety functions should be promoted for safety driving. The Hiroshima Prefectural Police conducts driver safety training sessions for elderly drivers using safe driving support vehicles, with the aim of reducing traffic accidents in Hiroshima Prefecture through the spread of such vehicles. To promote safe-driving support vehicles, it is important to show their beneficial effects. In this study, the author estimate the effects of a Lane-keeping Assistance System on accident avoidance and those of a Forward Collision Damage Mitigation Braking Control System on occupant injury reduction using 18 cases of single-vehicle accidents in Hiroshima Prefecture that occurred in 2017. In approximately 80% of these cases the accident was caused by lane departures and occurred during the day. It is thus likely a Lane-keeping Assistance System would have prevented these accidents. The author derived approximate expressions from the relationship between the collision velocity and occupant injury in single vehicle accidents stored in the database of the Institute for Traffic Accident and Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA). These approximate expressions are applied to the targeted case, to estimate occupant injury reduction by the Forward Collision Damage Mitigation Braking Control System.
