Conditions of reduced visibility, such as night-time, fog and other types of adverse weather, are associated with many collisions between motor vehicles. In foggy conditions it is not uncommon for a single incident to involve over a hundred vehicles; this is because the reduction in visibility causes traffic speeds to decrease, so also reducing the safety margin between vehicles and increasing the probability of rear-end collisions. A driver vision support system based on infrared technology, being developed by the EC-funded "DARWIN" project, has the potential to alleviate this problem. Whilst the primary advantage of such a system will be the early detection of objects in the road ahead, driving simulator trials have shown that using a pre-prototype mock-up of the DARWIN system in reduced visibility caused volunteer test subjects to leave a larger mean safety-margin to the vehicle in front during a car-following task. From a sample of 24 people, 22 recorded a larger mean headway to the vehicle in front - some of these showing a substantial increase - and the potential positive safety benefits of this behavioural change were illustrated in the considerable reduction in collisions and "near misses" with the car in front when the vision support system was in use. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Samenvatting