In Japan, where vehicles travel on the left side of the road (i.e., rightturns correspond to left turns in the U.S.), right turns have the potential to give heavy workload to drivers at intersections, because the driver has to judge the headway in oncoming traffic while avoiding pedestrians inthe crosswalk. Few investigations have addressed measures for avoiding conflicts with pedestrians in the crosswalk. This study proposes a headlightthat is designed to swivel rightward during right turns such as to illuminate pedestrians coming from the right. The authors conducted a field experiment to determine whether the swivel angle conditions affected drivers responses. The driver's avoidance behavior does not differ greatly among the three swivel angles. However, from the results of braking position after the vehicle started turning right, the swivel angles increases the distance between the conflict point on the crosswalk and the braking position of the right-turning vehicle. The driver could estimate the time lag early and accurately while turning right as the swivel angle increases.
Abstract