Abstract
To satisfy passengers’ experiential demand in scenic roads, a study on passengers’ comfort in the aspect of horizontal curve design is stated in this study. A new indicator sideway force coefficient (SFC) describing passengers’ comfort is introduced, which differs from lateral acceleration. The mechanism of SFC is provided depending on the dynamic balance condition of the vehicle on horizontal curve and SFCc representing passengers’ comfort tolerance limitation is investigated. A large scale naturalistic driving experiments along a park road are conducted, and the SFCc value from naturalistic driving experiments is verified through numerical simulation of 15 horizontal curves from 5 scenic roads from the perspectives of both passengers’ comfort and driving safety. The statistical analysis on data collected in field tests indicates that age and gender have no effect on SFCc, and the value of SFCc is determined as 0.291. The corresponding minimum radius limits under 20–60 km/h and superelevation 6%, 8%, and 10% are proposed. The numerical simulation denotes, when satisfying the comfort demand of passengers (SFC less than 0.291), the lateral distance path is in a safe range, which could also satisfy the safe driving requirements. Thus, SFCc and minimum radius limits proposed in this study are proved to be credible and appropriate for the curve design of horizontal alignment in scenic roads.
Highlights
Scenic roads refer to the roads inside scenic tourist areas, nature reserves, and parks, only providing services to travelers
Age and gender could be directly used as two independent variables to study SFCc. erefore, the participants in each curve could be divided into younger group and elder group, and it could divided into male group and female group
A new indicator sideway force coefficient (SFC) means passengers’ comfort was introduced, which is different from lateral acceleration used in current criterions and related studies
Summary
Scenic roads refer to the roads inside scenic tourist areas, nature reserves, and parks, only providing services to travelers. The design indicators of scenic road were directly adopted from the criterion for ordinary highway “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highway and Streets” [2]. This criterion considered passengers’ comfort and experience by introducing traffic quality, a more comprehensive way of promoting passengers’. E essence of passengers’ comfort measurement is human perception, defined as “subjective state of well-being or absence of mechanical disturbance in relation to the induced environment” in ISO 5805 [4, 5].
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