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Title:

Drivers’ Behavior and Knowledge Regarding Right-of-Way at Freeway On-ramp Merging Area

Accession Number:

01100676

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 USA
Order URL: http://pubsindex.trb.org/orderform.html

Abstract:

The knowledge of drivers on who has the right-of-way between the one on mainline lanes of a freeway and the one entering the freeway through on-ramp junction lane was evaluated. In addition, drivers’ opinions on how to make the on-ramp junctions safer were collected. A survey instrument with 21 items requesting drivers’ information in regard with demographics, freeway driving experience, knowledge of right-of-way and merging practices was used for data collection. The results show that crashes are rare events because most of them never happen due to alert drivers who avoid them and hence result into near misses, which can not be reported and documented. Most drivers act correctly when driving on freeway mainlines when they see a vehicle trying to merge from an entrance ramp but act improperly when merging into freeway from on-ramp lanes. Some drivers cannot identify which driver has the right-of-way at the merge area between the mainline and the on-ramp drivers. Yielding problems due to bad drivers’ attitudes have been identified by drivers as the leading cause of freeway-ramp merge area crashes, followed by lack of attention/talking on cell phone and drivers entering the freeway at low speeds. Drivers believe that heavy traffic/congestion is not a problem provided that drivers change their attitudes. Most of the drivers believe that they need longer acceleration lanes, better ramp signing and better driver’s education especially in terms of sign meaning and entrance ramp safety in order to make freeway-ramp merge areas safer.

Monograph Accession #:

01084478

Report Numbers:

08-2178

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 USA

Authors:

Eustace, Deogratias

University of Dayton

Indupuru, Vamsi Krishna

University of Dayton

Pagination:

15p

Publication Date:

2008

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC
Date: 2008-1-13 to 2008-1-17
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

Appendices (1) ; References (21) ; Tables (8)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2008 Paper #08-2178

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Last Modified:

Jun 3 2008 7:32AM