Abstract
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.
Highlights
Tunnel safety is an important traffic safety problem of freeway, as the severity of accidents in tunnels in terms of injuries, fatalities, and traffic jams is worse than that on open roads [1, 2]
Such rear-end crashes can be attributed to large speed fluctuations and other risky behavior at tunnel entrances arising from the need to adjust driving behavior to adapt to the environmental transition from open road to semi-closed tunnel. e complexity of the safety problems arising at the tunnel entrance and the importance of improving traffic safety indicate the necessity for further in-depth studies on the safety of tunnel entrances
To contain the overall driver deceleration process within the range of the tunnel entrance, the entrance was defined as the road section from 1,000 m before the tunnel portal to 200 m after the tunnel portal, a longer distance than that used in previous studies [14, 30]
Summary
Tunnel safety is an important traffic safety problem of freeway, as the severity of accidents in tunnels in terms of injuries, fatalities, and traffic jams is worse than that on open roads [1, 2]. Is possibly relates to the fact that rear-end crashes, which have been found to account for at least two-thirds of the total accidents in tunnel sections, tend to occur at tunnel entrances [6, 7]. Such rear-end crashes can be attributed to large speed fluctuations and other risky behavior at tunnel entrances arising from the need to adjust driving behavior to adapt to the environmental transition from open road to semi-closed tunnel. Elements analyzed in previous studies can be classified into four categories, including geometric characteristics and lighting, pavement, and traffic conditions. Lighting conditions have been shown to directly impact the occurrence of crashes at tunnel
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