The perceptual responses and driving behaviours of drivers at tunnel entrances vary, which could cause interference and accidents. This study investigated the effects of in-vehicle navigation on the perceptual responses and driving behaviours and whether these effects are actually valid for safety improvement. For this purpose, a series of naturalistic driving experiments was conducted and a comparative analysis was performed considering two different experiment conditions, control condition and in-vehicle navigation condition. Under each condition, the performances of twenty drivers at seven tunnels were evaluated. The area from 200 m outside the tunnel portal to 200 m inside the tunnel portal was averagely divided into four zones. In each zone, two types of perceptual responses (visual responses and psychological responses) and driving behaviours were analysed using six indicators: number of fixations, average duration of fixations, time interval between continuous R-waves, skin conductance response, speed difference in zones, and maximum deceleration. The results showed that in-vehicle navigation significantly affects the perceptual responses and driving behaviours of drivers, and these effects varied in different zones of the tunnel entrance. Furthermore, in-vehicle navigation was found to be valid for safety improvement because beneficial changes in four of the six indicators proved to be effective at appropriate zones. The remaining two indicators, average duration of fixations and maximum deceleration, were not valid, implying that the difficulty of driving information cognition and driving comfort could not be improved by in-vehicle navigation. Moreover, a negative correlation was discovered between the number of fixations and speed difference in zones. This study provides engineers a new knowledge by extending the quantifiable approaches to the analyses of the effectiveness of the effects of in-vehicle navigation.
Driver behavior and visual perception are very important factors in the management of traffic accident risk at tunnel entrances. This study was undertaken to analyze the differences in driving behavior and visual perception at the entrances of three types of tunnels, namely, short, medium-length, and long tunnels, under naturalistic driving conditions. Using three driving behavior indicators (speed, deceleration, and position) and two visual perception indicators (fixation and saccade), the driving performance of twenty drivers at six tunnels (two tunnels per condition) was comparatively analyzed. The results revealed that the speed maintained by the drivers prior to deceleration with braking under the short-tunnel condition was significantly larger than that under the medium- and long-tunnel conditions and that the drivers had a greater average and maximum deceleration rates under the short-tunnel condition. A similar general variation of driver visual perception appeared under the respective tunnel conditions, with the number of fixations gradually increasing and the maximum saccade amplitude gradually decreasing as the drivers approached the tunnel portal. However, the variation occurred approximately 60 m earlier under the short-tunnel condition than under the medium- and long-tunnel conditions. Interactive correlations between driving behavior and visual perception under the three conditions were established. The commencement of active deceleration was significantly associated (with correlation factors of 0.80, 0.77, and 0.79 under short-, medium-, and long-tunnel conditions, respectively) with the point at which the driver saccade amplitude fell below 10 degrees for more than 3 s. The results of this study add to the sum of knowledge of differential driver performance at the entrances of tunnels of different lengths.
The precise calibration of acceleration and deceleration parameters is crucial for improving the accuracy of operating speed prediction and analysis tools at tunnel entrances. Therefore, acceleration and deceleration data of passenger car captured from 20 drivers at 30 tunnel entrances were collected from 200 m outside to 200 m inside the tunnel portal and averaged across four study zones. The results show that, first, the distribution of deceleration rates based on speed differs from that of acceleration rates based on speed in all zones. Second, significant differences in the probability density distribution of deceleration were found between each zone ( p < 0.001 ), but differences in acceleration could not be found between any zones ( p > 0.05 ). Third, the feature values (breakpoints) of the acceleration/deceleration cumulative frequency curves were located near the 95th percentile, differing from the traditional 85th percentile found with the extant model. The feature values of acceleration in the four zones coincided at 0.5 m/s2 and those of deceleration were 0.93, 0.85, 0.70, and 0.47 m/s2 under zones 1–4, respectively. This study provides accurate feature values of acceleration and deceleration for modelling an updated tunnel entrance operating speed prediction model.
The paper provides an empirical analysis of road/tunnel design, traffic volume, and environmental factors associated with the increased likelihood of sequential crashes in freeway tunnels. The association rule mining and decision tree methods are employed since both of them are capable of identifying complicated interactions among variables and expressing them in the form of rules. Results show that tunnel length, traffic congestion, time of day, season, and vehicle type are the significant factors influencing the likelihood of sequential crashes in freeway tunnels. More importantly, association rule mining and decision tree analysis reveal that a combination of road/tunnel design, traffic, and environmental factors produces even a higher likelihood of sequential crashes, leading to a series of hazardous situations. For example, when factors including long tunnel and grade ≤ 2%, fourth level, and winter are combined, the proportion of sequential crashes is more than twice the average proportion of sequential crashes in the complete tunnel crash database. Traffic safety management should pay more attention to monitoring these hazardous situations which are more likely to be linked to sequential crashes.
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