Experimental traffic flow impact analysis of tinted vehicles using RTK GPS

A problem of vehicle with windows tinted excessively has been argued because it was known that the vehicle with the window can be a cause of accidents. That is because the ahead vehicle with the windows tinted excessively can obstruct the view of ahead traffic or roadway condition. However, this problem was not investigated in the field due to the difficulty of the data collection. The purpose of this study is to verify the safety issue of the vehicle based on the field study as well as the issue of the capacity reduction from the vehicle. Through this study, an innovative experiment method to verify the issues was developed using RTK GPS receivers, and a data collection was conducted using the developed experiment method. Using the collected data, the effects of the ahead vehicle with the windows on the traffic condition such as headways and acceleration noise were analyzed to test that the ahead vehicle with windows tinted too darkly affects the following vehicle maneuver as following the degree of tinting. This study was conducted as a frontier study and more studies, for example, full scale analyses considering various road and vehicle conditions will be conducted in the future.