Evaluating the environmental impact on connected vehicles during freeway accidents using VISSIM with probe vehicle data

We evaluated emissions as an environmental effect resulting from connected vehicles (CVs) during freeway accidents. The CVs were used to determine the CV driving characteristics, whose values were used to implement the CV driving pattern using a microscopic traffic simulation. The environmental effect of implementation of CV was evaluated using the vehicle trajectory data derived from the simulation results. Implementation of CV effectively minimized the vehicle emissions regardless of the market penetration rate (MPR). In terms of vehicle type, the emissions reduction rate of passenger cars was the highest at a maximum of 33.4%. In the case of pollutants, the reduction rate of CO based on all vehicles was the highest at a maximum of 28.8%. Overall, we found that the implementation of CV positively affected vehicle emissions reductions, and an MPR of 60% could maximize the vehicle emissions reduction effect.