Driver & Traffic Characteristics

• Driver Performance

- Information & Information Handling

- Driver Expectancy
- Driver Error

Lecture 3.
 Driver Performance

• Driving Task – navigation, guidance, and control

- Navigation: Trip planning and route following

Trip planning – find shortest, or most familiar, or most comfortable
path… to destination
Route following – drive on planned route

- Guidance: Road following and path maintenance in response to road

and traffic condition

- Control: Steering and speed control

 Driver Performance

Navigation- trip planning

 Driver Performance (Cont’d)

Navigation- path following

 Driver Performance (cont’d)

The Guidance Task:

Road following and path maintenance – steering and speed control

judgment, perceive and reaction process in response to road (grade,
weather, alignment etc) and traffic (degree of congestion, accident
etc) condition; Car following and passing decision.

• Information & Information handling

Information – Formal information & informal information

(90 percent information received by a driver is from vision)

Formal information- Traffic control devices (signal, stop sign, variable

massage sign etc.)
Informal information – curve, grade, landscaping etc.)
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Information handling:

Information perception: driver gather information mainly from vision, also

from feeling to changes (e.g. vehicle vibration, sound etc.)

Judgment: maintain an awareness of changing environment, make

judgment

Reaction: reaction time increases as a function of decision complexity

and amount of information to be processed, Reaction time range from
0.6 s – 3.5 s for expected information and 1.0 to 4.5 s for unexpected
Information (median). (exhibit 2-26, 2-27)
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Information
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Comments on Perception-Reaction Time (PRT)

Concept: The interval between the appearance of some object or

condition in the driver’s field of view and the initiation of a response (by
Olson, Forensic Aspects of Driver Perception and Response, 1996)

AASHTO standard – 2.5 s

Some suggestions from research: 3.2 s

 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Sight Distance – the minimum sight distance available should be sufficiently long
to enable a vehicle traveling at the design speed to stop before reaching a
stationary object in its path.

There are four types of Sight Distance – Definition by Traffic Engineering Handbook

SSD: Stopping Sight Distance, is the sum of the distance the vehicle travels from
the driver’s first possible sighting of the hazard to the instant the brake is touched,
plus the distance required to stop after brake activation

DSD: Decision Sight Distance is the distance required for a driver to detect an
unexpected or otherwise difficult-to-perceive information source or hazard in a
roadway environment that may be visually cluttered, recognize the hazard or its
threat potential, select an appropriate speed and path, initiate and complete the
required maneuver safely and efficiently (e.g. during poor weather condition)
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

PSD - Passing Sight Distance - the minimum sight distance for vehicle passing on
two lane (rural) highways

ISD – Intersection Sight Distance: sufficient distance to assure intersection safety

Will be introduced in detail through later lectures on Sight Distance

 Driver performance and geometric design

curve

lane Lane drop

Geometric
shoulder Width
reduction
…..

signal .
Drivers Control .
Road
Expectancy metering .
Information
.
……
.
Info. Handling .
Work zone
Management .
…….. .
……
.
Individual driver responses
speed
Info.
Traffic volume changes
……
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Driver Expectancy – Driver behavior tends to be determined by

experience, habit, and expectation

• Continuity- Events of the immediate past will be repeated

e.g. maintain headways

• Event: events that have not happened will not happen

• Temporal: when events will be cyclic, the longer a state occurs the more
likely it will change
e.g. traffic signal
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Computer aided design and evaluation

-- simulation
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

Driver Error:
40 percent of all traffic accidents involves driver error.

- Misjudgment by confusing information (sign, control device, traffic

situation, information from other drivers etc)

- Decreased performance by alcohol and drugs

- Speed: reduce visual field, restrict peripheral vision, limit time to receive
and process information

- Late perception & reaction time – old drivers: slower information

processing, reaction time, decision making, visual and hearing
deterioration, declined judgment ability
 Driver Performance (cont’d)

The Design Driver – diversity of drivers make it impossible to define a “design

driver” for design of highways, but older driver is a good candidate.

Some design guidance provided by Green book for old drivers:

• Use 95th-99th percentile driver characteristic in design

• Simplify information and design
• Larger and brighter signs and lighting
• Provide more redundant information
• Improve sight distance, provide decision distance
• Protected left turn
• Longer WALK time
• Speed enforcement
• Driver education