The Effects of Road Design on Speed Behaviour: A Literature Review (original) (raw)

Controlling driving speed is considered to be an effective way of improving driving safety; driving speed plays an important role in accident occurrence, since higher speeds lead to increased accident probability and severity. This literature review contains an overview of the efficacy of various speed reducing measures. Measures that affect driving speed directly are discussed, but special attention is paid to factors that affect driving speed indirectly, i.e. by influencing the willingness to show the appropriate speed behaviour. Advantages and disadvantages of various measures are discussed. Currently, the largest reductions in driving speed are realised with speed reducing measures that physically restrict driving at high speeds. Since this only forces road users to reduce speed, but does not let them choose this voluntarily, a more optimal solution is to design roads that are "self-explaining". By designing a road that provides a speed image, that is in accordance with the actual speed limit, drivers will choose the appropriate driving speed more or less automatically. Currently, subjective road categories do not seem to correspond with the official road categories. Yet, no research has addressed the exact relationship between subjective road classification and actual driving behaviour. Within the framework of MASTER, this relationship will be investigated by means of driving simulator experiments.