The purposes of this research are the following: one is to investigate drivers' behaviour and characteristics against the emergency braking of the leading vehicle by the JARI driving simulator. The other is to clarify the effectiveness of danger warning of the leading vehicle. For this analysis, the experiment using the JARI driving simulator was conducted. The virtual leading car on the simulator is controlled automatically and rapidly stops by the trigger command of a simulator operator. The subjects are 14 males in 20 to 29 ages. From the experimental data, the difference of such variables to be analyzed as brake delay time, mean deceleration and minimum headway distance were compared between the case that the drivers cannot predict the emergency braking and the case that they can predict it. As a result, those parameters in the unpredictable situation were larger than in the predictable situation. In order to improve the driver's avoidance characteristics, effectiveness of danger warning against the emergency braking of the leading car was examined. The main effect and the interaction of the vehicle velocity, the warning time and the headway time on the variables to be analyzed were clarified by analysis of variance. The result of this test showed that the effect of the danger warning was recognized and the danger warning can make compensation for the increase of the brake delay time in the unpredictable situation.
Abstract