Eco-Driving Versus Green Wave Speed Guidance for Signalized Highway Traffic: A Multi-Vehicle Driving Simulator Study

New in-vehicle systems provide the driver with speed advises through the variable message signs and the use of an in-car display. In this paper, two dynamic speed guidance strategies (green wave speed guidance strategy (GWSGS) and eco-driving speed guidance strategy (EDSGS)) through in-car display were tested. A new multi-vehicle driving simulator platform taking into account drivers interactions was built, and the two strategies for highway system were programmed through the script language provided by Virtools software. To evaluate the effectiveness of the overall strategies, 15 typical drivers were recruited to take part in the speed guidance experiments. It was found that the number of stops is both significantly reduced for the vehicles with the GWSGS and EDSGS. Compared with the vehicles without speed guidance, the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions can be reduced by 25% and 13% under the EDSGS and GWSGS respectively. The eco-driving vehicle's velocity trajectory is smoother than that of the green wave vehicle, and the average compliance rate of EDSGS is higher than GWSGS. The EDSGS showed more benefits than the GWSGS. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.