European countries are investigating on traffic safety research for a long time in order to improve safety standards on roads. In-vehicle technologies and co-operative services are attracting a lot of attention for their potential to deal with congestion problems and improve traffic safety. This paper aims to investigate the impact of infrastructure-to-vehicle co-operative systems, case of COOPERS, using data from field tests. Thirty five test drivers drove an instrumented vehicle twice, once with the system activated and once inactivated. Data related to driving performance was collected. The analysis of the data indicates that, on average drivers decrease their driving speeds and increase their headways when the system is activated. No significant impact of the system was found on drivers’ acceleration noise and lane-changing behaviour. The overall results are promising indicating that providing dynamic and updated traffic information to drivers using infrastructure-to-vehicle communications has a positive impact on drivers’ behaviour and safety. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting