Abstract
The effectiveness of interchange diagrammatic guide signs has significant meaning in traffic safety and driver’s understanding. This paper presented a comprehensive evaluation and classification of interchange diagrammatic guide signs’ complexity. The effectiveness of interchange diagrammatic guide signs relies on how well road users can understand those diagrams. This study tested 37 types of diagrams on the visual recognition complexity degree in three levels, general level, partial level, and detailed level, and finally seven indexes are selected to evaluation and classification of interchange diagrammatic guide signs’ complexity. These indexes can be used to conduct quantitative evaluation and classification. And the result of diagram complexity range is between −1.366 and 2.046, which have a correlation with graph cognition complexity, including perspective of distribution, diagram character, essential element expression manner, and utilization degree, andK-means clustering method was used in the analysis. Based on the presented method, 37 types of diagrams are separated into three categories according to their complexity score: low complexity, medium complexity, and high complexity. This study not only presents a theoretical approach for quantitative evaluation of guide signs’ complexity and effectiveness but also can be a reference for traffic sign design and application.
Highlights
Interchange diagrammatic guide signs are necessary traffic control device for urban traffic junctions
The cognition of interchange diagrammatic guide signs is closely related to the pattern of the graphic
Overall recognition time of diagrams is the time of drivers observing and understanding the complete graphs
Summary
Interchange diagrammatic guide signs are necessary traffic control device for urban traffic junctions. They are more intuitive, vivid, vibrant, and integrated in displaying and delivering information [1]. Take the city of Beijing as an example, 245 interchanges apply 369 diagrammatic guide signs in the urban area with a percentage of 75.3%, according to one bridge with two signs. The effectiveness of interchange diagrammatic guide signs relies on road user’s understanding of these diagrams [2]. The development process of interchange diagrams is from simple to complex. The complexity of interchange diagrams affects drivers’ cognitive load and awareness level significantly. It is of particular importance to apply research to the evaluation and classification method of graphics complexity
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