The SWOV (Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Verkeersveiligheid, Insitute for Scientific Research on Road Safety) wishes to studie the effects of in-car systems on traffic safety. In-car systems are mounted in individual vehicles and are capable of supporting the driver in his tasks. ISA (Intelligent Speed Adation) is such an in-car system which provides the driver with realtime information about the speed limit for the road he is driving on at that particular moment, which is called an advising ISA. As an extra option, ISA can limit the maximum speed of the vehicle to the speed limit of that particular road. These systems have definitive effects on traffic safety and the SWOV is very interested in these effects. Research in these effects can be done by doing practical research with actual cars being equipped with an ISA system. But this is very expensive and besides it is practically hard to perform. Another option is microsimulation on a computer. This means the use of a microsimulation software program wich is capable of modelling road traffic networks with a realistic moving traffic flow on its network. ISA will then be simulated in this model, and use the simulation to studie the effects of this ISA. But first the SWOV would like to be sure that the software model being used for this study, is suited for this research. This not only means that the option to simulate ISA must be incorporated in the program, but the traffic model also has to be acurate and realistic anough to be able to studie the effects of ISA and make the right conclusions. A study to evaluate Paramics for ISA research is described in this report. For this studie, the microsimulation programm "Paramics 2000" will be used. In Paramics, it is currently possible to simulate an advising form of ISA. In Paramics, models were made of different traffic situations, like a stroke of highway, a roundabout, etc. Then, simulations were done on these models with ISA equiped vehicles, and vehicles without ISA, during wich certain varabels were measured. These measurements were used to draw graphics wich showed the differences between ISA simulations and non-ISA simulations. With these graphics the conclusions were made, whether Paramics is suitable for ISA research or not. Because of the fact that it is not possible at the moment to simulate an ISA which is capable of limiting the maximum speed of the car to the road's maximum, and the outcome of the graphics wich showed that the current form of ISA is not suitable yet, the conclusion can be made that Paramics in its current form is not capable for ISA research to the effects on traffic safety. The negative results of the measurements were caused by the fact that vehicles use the ISA speed limit on exactly the same way as a normal speed limit on a certain road. This means that vehicles handle the limit on exactly the same way, wich causes no differences in the measurements between non-ISA simulations and ISA simulations. Dispite this, there is one way the current ISA function in Paramics can ben used. This is by running simulations wich have cars who don't receive an ISA limit, and cars who do receive an ISA limit, wich is lower then the normal speed limit. This way two groups of vehivles are created with two different speed limits. This can have interessting effects. These tests are also desrcibed in this report. Presuming that drivers of vehicles in reality won't use an ISA speed limit exactly the same way as a normal speed limit, the conclusion can be made that Paramics currently is not suitable for research on the effects of ISA on traffic safety. Currently a cooperation between the SWOV and the imporer of Paramics 2000 for the Netherlands is ongoing to realise this goal.
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