Evaluation of road cross-section design using driving simulation

• Main Author: Ng, Kay Guan
• Other Authors: Lum Kit Meng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76249
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Effective land usage is often a crucial and important concern for land-scare and highly urbanised places like Singapore. Road transport networks have been considered as a possible area of optimisation through the minimisation of lane widths. Any potential changes to road cross-section design hinges on its effect to driving behaviour of road users especially with safety. Driving behaviour of users shows the natural tendencies of drivers to act in certain ways without external influences. It can vary with multiple factors like age, gender and experience. This directly affects drivers’ speed control, reaction to differing lane widths and also safety. A driving simulator can be used for assessment due to its advantages of greater convenience, lower cost, safety and controllability. A driving simulation can help determine whether the changes in lane width will affect driving behaviour in terms of speed control. Participants’ responses regarding their perception and workload when driving on different lane widths should also be gathered. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of change in the road cross-section design on driving behaviour, user perception and workload through the use of a driving simulator. Ninety-eight participants with valid driving licenses and sufficient driving experience took part in the one-hour long experiment. The experiment is divided into an adaptation driving phase, followed by three separate drives on the same route but with differing lane widths. After each experimental drive, participants are required to fill up a four page questionnaire to record their feedback on the route. Results obtained indicate that decreasing lane width will directly affect the speed of driving vehicles. It is noted that a reduction in lane width results in a drop in average speed. The significance of this will be dependent on traffic flow and land usage importance. Analysis of participants’ perception and workload reflected a key significant difference. The average perception scores of the minor road increases with lane width while the expressway produced the highest score on its second widest width. A similar observation was reflected in the NASA Task Load Index scores. Thus, for future researches, it is recommended that more permutations of the experimental route be tested and driving simulators with different fidelities be used to help determine if a perception ‘carry-through’ phenomenon exist or other factors were involved.