In the road-to-vehicle communication (RVC) on intelligent transport systems (ITS), the frequent occurrence of shadowing caused by other vehicles deteriorates wireless transmission quality because of a small sized zone. However, a diffraction wave generated at the edge of vehicle can be utilized in applying adaptive modulation method with decreased modulation level. Therefore, it can be expected to keep communication only with a diffraction wave under shadowing. Hence this paper proposes an application of adaptive modulation for RVC system. This paper first reveals its improved effect in shadowing duration by computer simulation considering practical traffic flow, radio reflection and diffraction, and then shows that applying adaptive modulation can increase throughput performance largely.