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U.S. Department of Transportation
Triscallion_Black
Adaptive Cruise Control and Vehicle Platooning
Environmental Benefits of ACC:
•The Netherlands: ACC reduced CO2 and NOx by 3%.1
•Southeast Michigan: ACC tests with 108 non-professional drivers reduced fuel consumption by 10% compared to manual driving.2
•California: An ACC simulation between Palo Alto and San Jose reduced fuel consumption by 5% to 7%.2
1.Mahmod, M., van Arem, B., Pueboobpaphan, R., & Igamberdiev, M. (2009). Modeling reduced traffic emissions in urban areas: the impact of demand control, banning heavy duty vehicles, speed restriction and adaptive cruise control. TRB 2010 Annual Meeting. Washington, DC: TRB.
2.National Research Council. (2010). Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
3.Top News (UK). http://topnews.co.uk/217706-platooning-can-slash-road-co2-emissions-20-cent 
Environmental Benefits of Vehicle Platooning:
•Volvo demonstrated vehicle platooning- a new technology that lets driverless cars sync up with a leading vehicle.
•A demonstration was conducted in Gothenburg, Sweden as part of the European Union’s research project, known as SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment).
•Vehicle platooning is expected to slash motorway CO2 emissions by up to 20%.3 
ACC works like conventional cruise control, allowing the driver of a vehicle to set the desired speed, but it also automatically adjusts the vehicle speed to match the preceding vehicle to maintain a predefined following distance. ACC systems are typically radar-based systems installed in vehicles that can monitor the vehicle in front and adjust the speed of the vehicle to keep it at a preset distance behind the lead vehicle, even in most fog and rain conditions. These systems can determine how fast the vehicle is approaching the vehicle ahead. For example, when approaching a lead vehicle at a high rate of speed, the system will activate sooner than when approaching slower.

These systems enable the drivers to set a
desired cruising speed as well as a desired following gap with respect to a lead vehicle. If no
lead vehicle is present, then the system will regulate the vehicle speed, as any conventional
cruise control does, but once a lead vehicle is detected, the system will adjust the vehicle’s speed
to maintain the gap set by the driver, with no intervention needed from the driver.