Weaving lanes are designed to ensure the crossing of two or more traffic streams traveling in the same general direction along a significant length of highway without the aid of traffic control devices. Weaving lanes are useful in many design situation: especially they assume a key role in roundabouts characterized by wide inscribed circle diameter, where the weaving maneuver represents a crucial aspect for safety. This is confirmed by several findings, that demonstrate as the weaving maneuver is one of the most difficult operation to analyze in terms of road safety. The need for research directed towards a functional analysis of roundabouts characterized by the weaving lane, comes from the necessity to ensure high safety standards through appropriate design procedures and safety audit. Particularly when European Community Countries were required to transpose the Directive 2008/96/CE, which imposes a significant reduction in the road accident rate. Refering to Italian regulations, they only suggest to use probabilistic methods for designing weaving lane in roundabouts, leaving the designers free to choose the statistical distribution. Many studies report that the combination between the length of weaving lanes and the traffic volume is a key factor to explain high accident rate along interchange zones Bearing in mind this facet, the present paper proposes an analysis of driver behavior on different weaving lanes in various traffic conditions performed on an interactive driving simulator. Four different lengths of weaving lane combined with four different traffic flow conditions were simulated and the different drivers’ performance have been analyzed. The drivers were requested to drive along the four simulated road stretches, in four different runs, choosing the velocity, according to what the road scenario suggested them. A risk assessment has been conducted providing a methodology to define the weaving lane length by analyzing driver's behavior as a function of driver's risk perception. It has been observed that the increase of weaving lane length is effective only when the traffic flow conditions exceed a certain threshold. The results underline the reliability of driving simulator outputs, in particular regarding the investigation of the relationships between road geometrical characteristics and drivers’ behavior.
DE BLASIIS, M.R., Diana, S., Veraldi, V. (2015). Safety audit for weaving maneuver: a driver simulation safety analysis. In 2015 Road Safety & Simulation International Conference (pp.606-616).
Safety audit for weaving maneuver: a driver simulation safety analysis
DE BLASIIS, Maria Rosaria;
2015-01-01
Abstract
Weaving lanes are designed to ensure the crossing of two or more traffic streams traveling in the same general direction along a significant length of highway without the aid of traffic control devices. Weaving lanes are useful in many design situation: especially they assume a key role in roundabouts characterized by wide inscribed circle diameter, where the weaving maneuver represents a crucial aspect for safety. This is confirmed by several findings, that demonstrate as the weaving maneuver is one of the most difficult operation to analyze in terms of road safety. The need for research directed towards a functional analysis of roundabouts characterized by the weaving lane, comes from the necessity to ensure high safety standards through appropriate design procedures and safety audit. Particularly when European Community Countries were required to transpose the Directive 2008/96/CE, which imposes a significant reduction in the road accident rate. Refering to Italian regulations, they only suggest to use probabilistic methods for designing weaving lane in roundabouts, leaving the designers free to choose the statistical distribution. Many studies report that the combination between the length of weaving lanes and the traffic volume is a key factor to explain high accident rate along interchange zones Bearing in mind this facet, the present paper proposes an analysis of driver behavior on different weaving lanes in various traffic conditions performed on an interactive driving simulator. Four different lengths of weaving lane combined with four different traffic flow conditions were simulated and the different drivers’ performance have been analyzed. The drivers were requested to drive along the four simulated road stretches, in four different runs, choosing the velocity, according to what the road scenario suggested them. A risk assessment has been conducted providing a methodology to define the weaving lane length by analyzing driver's behavior as a function of driver's risk perception. It has been observed that the increase of weaving lane length is effective only when the traffic flow conditions exceed a certain threshold. The results underline the reliability of driving simulator outputs, in particular regarding the investigation of the relationships between road geometrical characteristics and drivers’ behavior.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
