Driving Simulation to Evaluate Safety Engineering Applications for Rural Roads

A driving simulator experiment was conducted to investigate two types of potential low cost highway engineering safety improvements in a single study. The experiment focused on: (1) advanced detection and speed reduction for curves in rural two-lane roads at night; (2) traffic calming for small rural towns during the day. The experiment was conducted in the Federal Highway Administration's Highway Driving Simulator. Several novel graphics modeling, scenario control and data collection techniques were employed in order to successfully conduct this experiment: Two different types of driving environments were interleaved into a single driving scenario, necessitating multiple changes between day and night in a single drive. A trial-based procedure was developed for presenting stimuli and collecting data for 20 types of curves and 6 types of towns in a single drive. Scenario control incorporated multiple random selection algorithms for curve treatment, town treatment, approach tangent length, curve direction, curve severity, etc. The graphics incorporated a realistic dynamic headlight illumination model which reflected pavement markings and post-mounted delineators (PMDs) at proper recognition distances. A novel curve warning treatment was modeled with streaming light-emitting diode lights mounted atop PMDs to indicate curve direction and curve severity from afar. A voice onset trigger system was developed to measure curve feature recognition distances from the driver’s verbal responses. These novel techniques facilitated a single driving simulation experiment to identify which of several potential low cost safety improvements were worthy of future study in two separate engineering application areas.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Chou, Tsai-Chia
  • Molino, John Anthony
  • Williams, Jason
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2011-1-23 to 2011-1-27
• Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 90th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Costs; Daylight; Driving simulators; Highway curves; Highway safety; Periods of the day; Road markings; Rural areas; Safety; Safety engineering; Small towns; Traffic calming; Two lane highways; Warning signs
• Uncontrolled Terms: Nighttime driving
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01334337
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 11-2056
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Mar 28 2011 11:37AM