Green light for “Green Carpet“
Relaxed driving through the city by car or bike without having to stop at a red light: The digital traffic light assistant “Green Carpet” makes the green wave a reality. Before the app enters the test phase in Vienna, we were commissioned by the city to investigate whether its use leads to distractions in road traffic and possible hazards.
Intelligent transportation systems are a key element for the mobility of the future, also in the “Smart City” of Vienna. One of the projects: The “Green Carpet” traffic light assistant, which indicates via a smartphone app at what permissible speed green light is reached and how many seconds the traffic light is on red. The goals are a better traffic flow, and a more relaxed driving in urban traffic.
The introduction of the app on the Vienna Ring Road from fall 2021 was preceded by a safety test with eye hyper-tracking glasses. On an eleven-kilometer-long, busy test route in Salzburg, where a comparable app is already in test operation, we analyzed the gaze behavior of car drivers and cyclists in heavy traffic, first without and then with app use.
“The analysis of gaze behavior yields more reliable results than other test methods because seeing and perceiving often occur unconsciously and automatically,” explains Daniel Pratl, project manager at the responsible municipal department MA 33.
These were the results of the “Green Carpet” eye-tracking study
Green light for the green wave assistant: No distractions from road traffic were observed among drivers using the app. Drivers do not blindly rely on the app without checking traffic. Rather, they use it as an additional source of information.
For cyclists, the position of the smartphone on the handlebars matters: Bicycles with a high handlebar are ideal because they do not require the rider to make long gaze jumps (saccades) between the app, the traffic light and the surrounding traffic. All aspects are perceived well and almost simultaneously.
“Thanks to the profound analysis of Viewpointsystem, we can largely exclude hazards from using the green wave assistant and recommend the app for car drivers and certain types of bicycles from an optophysiological point of view,” says Daniel Pratl of MA33, summarizing the positive test results.
