Effects of Driving Behaviors on Vehicle Emissions: Case Study in Houston, Texas

The Defensive Driving Course (DDC) strives to improve drivers' driving behaviors so that they drive in a way to save lives, time, and money, regardless of conditions around them and actions of others. Since different driving behaviors may lead to different operating modes that affect vehicle emissions, the implementation of DDC may change the real-world vehicle emissions. This paper is intended to analyze the effects of defensive vs. non-defensive driving behaviors on vehicle emissions based on the field tests at different locations and time periods. It is shown from the analysis that (1) the defensive driver's primary consideration is safety, thus may increase emissions of some pollutant types in the real world; (2) emissions from the non-defensive driving increase more significantly than those from the defensive driving during peak hours in the downtown area, while in the highway area, emissions from the defensive driving increase more significantly than those from the non-defensive driving; and (3) while the defensive driving can decrease emission rates in the unit of emission mass per unit time, since the increase in travel time by the defensive driving may outweigh its decrease in emission rates for some pollution types, the defensive driving may end up increasing total vehicle emissions for certain pollution types.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC20 Transportation and Air Quality
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Yu, Lei
  • Tao, Fei
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2012-1-22 to 2012-1-26
• Date: 2012

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 91st Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Defensive drivers; Driving; Exhaust gases; Traffic speed; Travel time
• Identifier Terms: Performance Monitoring System (PeMS)
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; I15: Environment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01367723
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 12-0852
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Apr 11 2012 11:13AM