Abstract
Variable message signs (VMSs), as one of the important ITS devices, provide real-time traffic information of road network to drivers in order to improve route choice and relieve the traffic congestion. In this study, the effectiveness of VMS on driving behavior was tested based on a driving simulation experiment. A road network with three levels of VMS location to route-diverging intersection and three types of VMS information format was designed in a high fidelity driving simulator platform. Fifty-two subjects who were classified by driver age, gender, and vocation successfully completed this experiment. The experimental results showed that driver characteristics, VMS location, and information format profoundly influence driving behaviors. Based on the research findings, it is suggested that VMS would be positioned between 150 m and 200 m upstream of the diverging point to balance the VMS effects on traffic safety and operation and the graphic information VMS format is better than the format with text massage only.
Highlights
With the rapid development of urbanization and motorization, China has become the world’s second largest car country and the constantly climbing number of vehicles in urban road networks leads to more and more serious traffic congestion problems
The parameter estimates of logistic regression models for Variable message signs (VMSs) locations and information formats are shown in Table 3, respectively, where the odds ratios Exp(B) in the table is defined as the ratio of turn decision likelihood to keeping-straight likelihood
In the first part for VMS-I analysis, the regression results indicate that the independent variables of age (P < 0.001), gender (P = 0.009), VMS location, and SV (P = 0.014) are significantly associated with route choice behavior
Summary
With the rapid development of urbanization and motorization, China has become the world’s second largest car country and the constantly climbing number of vehicles in urban road networks leads to more and more serious traffic congestion problems. As an advanced traffic guidance system, can provide real-time traffic information in urban road networks to help drivers choose the routes with lower traffic volumes. The vehicles can be distributed reasonably in road networks so as to improve the performance of traffic system [3, 4]. VMS effectiveness is depentdent on drivers’ route choice behavior, and VMS design and position may influence lane changing and speed control behaviors. It is critical to investigate how the interface type, sign position, and guidance information formats of VMS affect driving behaviors in urban road networks
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