TIME TO CHANGE LANES: A LITERATURE REVIEW

The report reviews five articles concerning driver lane-changing behavior. Four of them report driver visual scanning patterns while changing lanes, emphasizing the use of mirrors. It appears that driver eye fixations have a mean and standard deviation of about 0.3 seconds and are distributed log normally. Typically, when changing lanes, drivers make about 2.5 head movements which take about 1 to 1.5 seconds each. When glances to the road ahead are included, the mean visual search time for preparing a lane change is as much as 3.7 seconds without traffic and as much as 6.1 seconds with traffic (depending on the condition). Standard deviations of those estimates are about 0.3 seconds. Allowing for 2 standard deviations, this suggests that 6.6 seconds should be allowed for the visual search associated with a single vehicle lane change and about 1.5 seconds to execute the change. These estimates should be applied with some caution since the data are primarily for moderately experienced drivers (who take less time than novice and elderly drivers). Further, while traffic volume is not specified, it is believed that the traffic counts were less than those found on contemporary highways.

• Corporate Authors:

  University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute

  2901 Baxter Road
  Ann Arbor, MI  United States  48109-2150
• Authors:
  • Finnegan, P
  • Green, P
• Publication Date: 1990-9

Media Info

• Pagination: 24 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Behavior; Driver experience; Driver performance; Drivers; Guides to the literature; Lane changing; Literature reviews; Mirrors; Personnel performance; Scanners; Standard deviation; Vision; Visual perception
• Uncontrolled Terms: Driver age
• Old TRIS Terms: Driver vision; Scanning
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00605355
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: IVHS-TR-90-13, UMTRI-90-34, HS-041 202
• Files: HSL, TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 31 1995 12:00AM