Objective: The probability of crash occurrence on horizontal curves is 1.5 to 4 times higher than that on tangent sections. A majority of these crashes are associated with human errors. Therefore, human behavior in curves needs to be corrected.
Methodology: In this study, 2 different road marking treatments, optical circles and herringbone patterns, were used to influence driver behavior while entering a curve on a 2-lane rural road section. A driving simulator was used to perform the experiment. The simulated road sections are replicas of 2 real road sections in Flanders.
Results: Both treatments were found to reduce speed before entering the curve. However, speed reduction was more gradual when optical circles were used. A herringbone pattern had more influence on lateral position than optical circles by forcing drivers to maintain a safe distance from opposing traffic in the adjacent lane.
Conclusion: The study concluded that among other low-cost speed reduction methods, optical circles are effective tools to reduce speed and increase drivers’ attention. Moreover, a herringbone pattern can be used to reduce crashes on curves, mainly for head-on crashes where the main problem is inappropriate lateral position. 相似文献
The current study considered, for the first time, compensatory decisions within the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to explain why people use mobile phones while driving. The effects of age, gender, and mobile phone mode on respondents’ answering intentions and compensatory decisions were mainly examined. A series of questions were administered to 333 drivers (ages 25-59), which included (1) demographic measures, (2) scales that measured prior mobile use activities in both driving and ordinary contexts, (3) a question to measure drivers’ perceptions of the safety of hands-free phones, and (4) TPB measures, which measured answer intention and two compensatory behavioural decisions (i.e., reminding the caller that he/she is driving, limiting the length of a conversations (including perceived its limits)), along with predictive variables. Drivers reported a moderate likelihood of answering intention and a strong tendency to engage in the two compensatory behaviours. Answering intention and compensatory decisions, perceived behavioural control, perceived risk, and usage frequency were more dependent on mobile phone mode and age group than gender. The regression models explained 64% and 67% of the variance in answering intention in the handheld and hands-free scenario separately. Attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural risk and control (PBRC), and prior answering behaviour emerged as common predictors. The predictive models explained 31% and 37% of the variance for perceived limits of a conversation length in handheld and hands-free scenarios, respectively. Answering intention and PBRC consistently predicted most of the variance (handheld: 28%; hands-free: 32%) for this compensatory perception limits. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. 相似文献
Since the reform and opening-up, China’s economy has achieved remarkable development and so does the urbanization. However, there is an unavoidable contradiction between urban sprawl and the protection of arable land and the environment. By redefining the urban sprawl boundary, this paper is to provide a solution for the conflict above on the China’s urbanization context. The ideal boundary, moderate boundary and limit boundary are defined for urban sprawl in space. Taking Nanjing city as a case, the three urban sprawl boundaries are estimated in this paper based on the calculation of agricultural land resources value in Nanjing. The results show that 1) the integrated value of agricultural (cultivated) land resources in Nanjing is 1.55 × 107 CNY·hm−2, the economic value accounts for only 8.74% of the integrated value, while 91.26% of the integrated value has not revealed itself due to the existing institutional arrangements, policy distortions, and imperfect land market; 2) it is difficult to define the ideal and moderate boundaries due to the relatively low price of North Nanjing. In South Nanjing the land price is expensive and the ideal, moderate and limit boundaries are expanded to Jiangning, Qixia, and Yuhuatai; 3) the city scale of South Nanjing should be limited within 5.82 × 104 hm2, which is roughly the same as the designated size of 5.81 × 104 hm2 in the urban planning. It is suggested that the rational scope of urban expansion should be controlled within the moderate boundary. 相似文献