To prevent accidents attributable to road surfaces covered with snow or ice or attributable to visibility obstruction in winter, development is sought of a system that actively utilizes Intelligent Transport System (ITS) to support safe driving in winter. Expectations of ITS are high, especially in its prevention of collisions between a car that has stopped because of an accident or because of inability to drive during snowstorm, and a following driver who is late in noticing that car. It is necessary to quickly warn a following driver of an accident or a stopped vehicle ahead at the time of snowstorm. However, it is difficult to identify specific sites where accidents occur or vehicles stop. Also, there is a risk of overlooking a road information board that we use as warning equipment. For these reasons, a system that gives continuous warning is required. In light of this, from around 1994 the authors furthered the development of the Intelligent Delineator System, which added the function of danger warning to the light-emitting pole. Five ministries and agencies in Japan developed ITS architecture in November 1999 to promote the development and widespread use of ITS in its early stage. In addition, to facilitate the spread of ITS infrastructure to local areas, a guideline that accords with the ITS architecture was made for nine services, through the cooperation of the Ministry of Construction, Hokkaido Development Bureau, Japan Highway Public Corporation and other bodies. Because the Advanced cruise-assist Highway System for cold regions (Cold Region AHS) was one of those services, the Hokkaido Development Bureau made a guideline on AHS for cold regions in April 2000 with the cooperation of the Public Works Research Institute of the Ministry of Construction (currently the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport: PWRI). The guideline of cold region AHS is characterized by a greater degree of support, in terms of time and area, than that of ordinary Advanced cruise-assist Highway System which the PWRI has been developing. The need was identified for technical development and examination of the following. (1) Sensing technology for cold regions, such as sensors that detect obstruction, including a millimeter wave radar that can detect obstructions ahead even when visibility is impaired, and sensors that can detect very slippery frozen road surfaces. (2) Information provision devices that can continuously issue a danger warning, and survey on user acceptability of methods and devices of various specifications for proper danger warning. The Civil Engineering Research Institute is tasked with the development of a pilot safe driving support system for cold regions and the survey of user acceptability of the system by experiments using test drivers and other means. This study reports the results of these surveys.
Abstract