Abstract Previous studies have shown that about 90% of traffic accidents are due to human error, which means that human factors may affect a driver's braking behaviors and thus their driving safety, especially when the driver makes a braking motion. However, most studies have mounted sensors on the brake pad, ignoring to some extent an analysis of the driver's behavior before the brake pad is pressed (pre-braking). Therefore, to determine the effect of different human factors on drivers' pre-braking behaviors, this study focused on analyzing drivers' local joints (knee, ankle, and toe) by a motion capture device. A Hilbert–Huang Transform (HHT)-based local human body movement analysis method was used to decompose the realistic complex pre-braking actions into sub-actions such as intrinsic mode functions (IMF1, IMF2, etc.). Analysis of the results showed that IMF1 is a common and necessary action when pre-braking for all drivers, and IMF2 may be the safety assurance action that allows right-foot transverse movement at the beginning part of the pre-braking process. We also found that the experienced, male, and Phys.50 groups may have consistent characteristics in the HHT scheme, which could mean that such drivers would have better performance and efficiency during the pre-braking process. The results of this study will be useful in decomposing and discerning the specific actions that lead to accidents, providing insights into driver training for novice drivers, and guiding the construction of daily automated driver assistance or accident prevention systems (advanced driver assistance systems, ADASs).

This paper gives an overview of the introduction and subsequent development of optical fiber cable and its application to subscriber networks enabling economical broad-band services, such as video and high-speed digital data transmissions. This paper also outlines NTT's developments on subscriber optical fiber cable technology-in particular, the five-fiber ribbon cable structure, mass-fusion splicing machine, and multifiber connector-in its ongoing endeavors to establish economical and flexible subscriber optical fiber networks which provide optical fibers to each subscriber.