Effect of Information Provision to Following Vehicle on Reducing Amount of CO 2 Emissions and Safety Drive

Abstract For reducing the amount of CO 2 emissions from vehicles approaching a signalized intersection in car-following situation, the information provision system to a driver is proposed in this paper. The system provides mainly the accelerator-off indication, in which the vehicle could pass through the intersection or shorten the idling time if it would follow the information. In car-following situation, the distance between the lead vehicle and the following vehicle might become shorter by the information provision so that risk of traffic collisions may be raised. Therefore, the influence of the information provision on driving behavior in car-following situation is grasped using a driving simulator in this paper. The risk of traffic collisions is measured by the TTC (time to collision) inverse when the information is provided, and the effectiveness in reducing the amount of CO 2 emissions from vehicle is also evaluated quantitatively. From results of the experiments with 25 participants, although the information provision only to the lead vehicle might raise the risk of traffic collision, it can be seen that the information provision to the following vehicle can contribute to reduce the risk of traffic collision even under car-following situations. Moreover, it can be seen that the information provision to both vehicles reduces the amount of CO 2 emissions from the following vehicle most effectively.