01624318

Component

Roadway complexity affects driver performance, as shown through simulation studies and field data. This research modeled the relationship between participants’ perceived complexity of roadway environments and their associated assessment times, where assessment time was the time taken to make a judgment regarding how difficult it would be to drive through varied roadway scenes. Self-reported ratings of complexity and assessment times were obtained for four participant demographic groups across 100 roadway images. Participants rated the images on a five-point scale in accordance with how difficult it would be to drive through the scene (i.e. task complexity). Results indicated a parabolic relationship between participants’ assessment times and the perceived complexity of the scene, with roadways at the midpoint of the perceived complexity scale having the longest assessment times. High school participants were also found to have statistically significantly shorter assessment times than college-level participants. Shorter assessment times in this study were found for environments that were either very simple (rural with no traffic) or highly complex (urban intersection with many pedestrians), environments that are both known to have high crash rates and reduced driver performance. These findings suggest that there is an optimal range of complexity in roadway environments and motivate further research on the link between stimulation during the driving task and driver performance. Findings can have safety and design implications ranging from the inclusion of risk parameters related to driver attention and perception in the Highway Safety Manual’s risk models, to road safety audits, where these findings can shed light on understanding and correcting for crashes caused by environmental conditions.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND10 Standing Committee on Vehicle User Characteristics.

01618707

17-01611

English

14p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Photos; References (35) ; Tables

Alertness; Behavior; Drivers; Risk assessment; Roadside; Roadside structures; Rural highways; Urban highways; Vehicle mix

Highways; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01611

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:32AM