The authors investigated whether system reliability, repetition of information presentation, or timing of information presentation from a vehicle-infrastructure cooperative safe-driving support system would annoy drivers. Ten participants drove through a curve in which a vehicle they could not see was parked. They were then given information about the collision risk. The results showed that system reliability and timing of information presentation affected drivers annoyance with the support-system function.

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A previous report indicated that system reliability and presentation timing affected driver annoyance with systems that reported dangerous curve situations. This study investigated whether the system reliability, repetition of information presentation, or timing of presenting information would affect driver annoyance with such systems. Ten drivers participated in a driving-simulator experiment. The experiment found that drivers were annoyed differently by the curve situation in the previous report and the intersection situation. Factors contributing to driver annoyance are discussed.

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This Report discusses whether road-safety education could increase children’s road and school risk perception. Twenty-four upper grade students in primary school discussed causes and measures of road accidents in small groups twice and completed questionnaires before and after the discussions. The questionnaire results indicated that small-group discussions increased children’s risk perception both on roads and in school. Generalization of road-safety education is discussed.

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Our previous report indicated the typical unsafe behavior of elderly drivers when entering intersections without the right of way. This study focused on typical situations when entering intersections with a road mirror. The study also investigated the relationships between the characteristics and unsafe elderly drivers. Driving experiments on the test course revealed the characteristic confirmation at an intersection with a road mirror. Two typical patterns, ignoring the road mirror after crossing the stop line and stoping beyond the stop line, led to interference with oncoming vehicles.

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Observing driver behavior by reproducing traffic accidents and conflict situations is effective for investigating accidents. In previous studies, driving simulators were often used to reproduce accident and conflict scenarios, but such systems had difficulties in reproducing realistic situations. Therefore, a new instrumented vehicle, named JARI-ARV (Japan Automobile Research Institute - Augmented Reality Vehicle), was developed to reproduce realistic traffic accident and conflict scenarios without putting the driver at risk of an actual collision. JARI-ARV was equipped with three Liquid - Crystal - Displays (LCDs) and three video cameras in front of the driver. To reproduce a critical scene, computer graphics (CG) are superimposed on top of the real frontal image captured by the video cameras. These CGs are adopted from Augmented Reality (AR) and give the impression that they are on a test field. In this paper, we confirmed the acceptability and controllability in some driving situations by comparing JARI-ARV with a standard vehicle.

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