In-vehicle applications that are based on Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication technologies need to be evaluated under lab-controlled conditions before performing field tests. The need for a tailored platform to perform specific research on the cooperative Advanced Driving Assistance System (ADAS) to assess the effect on driver behavior and driving performance motivated the development of a driver-centric traffic simulator that is built over a 3D graphics engine. The engine creates a driving situation as it communicates with a traffic simulator as a means to simulate real-life traffic scenarios. The TraCI as a Service (TraaS) library was implemented to perform the interaction between the driver-controlled vehicle and the Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO). An extension of a previous version, this work improves simulation performance and realism by reducing computational demand and integrating a tailored scenario with the ADAS to be tested. The usability of the implemented simulation platform was evaluated by means of an experiment related to the efficiency of a Traffic Light Assistant (TLA), showing the analysis of the answer that 80% of the participants were satisfied with the simulator and the TLA system implemented.

Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) make the exchange of information possible through cooperative systems that broadcast traffic data to enhance road safety. Traffic light assistance (TLA) systems in particular utilize real-time traffic light timing data by accessing the information directly from the traffic management center. To test the reliability of a TLA system based on networked intervehicular interaction with infrastructure, we present in this paper an approach to perform theoretical studies in a lab-controlled scenario. The proposed system retrieves the traffic light timing program within a range in order to calculate the optimal speed while approaching an intersection and shows a recommended velocity based on the vehicle's current acceleration and speed, phase state of the traffic light, and remaining phase duration. Results show an increase in driving efficiency in the form of improvement of traffic flow, reduced gas emissions, and waiting time at traffic lights after the drivers adjusted their velocity to the speed calculated by the system.