Evaluation of the effectiveness of advanced driving headlights using a driving simulator

Abstract

In this study, a method to evaluate the effectiveness of adaptive driving beam (ADB) to enhance a driver's perception level for detecting pedestrians in a driving simulator is proposed. First, we investigated a driver's reaction time for applying brakes and the time taken to detect pedestrians stepping out from sidewalks. Next, we evaluated the effectiveness of ADB in terms of likelihood of collision mitigation using this reaction time based on the system reliability concept that we have proposed in previous studies. Using a driving simulator, we verified that it is almost possible to simulate the distribution of illuminance on the road surface by headlights and that it is useful to investigate the reaction time of drivers to detect obstacles such as pedestrians walking on a drive lane during the night.

Keywords

• driving support
• recognition timing
• adaptive driving beam (adb)
• collision mitigation
• system reliability concept