How the Interpretation of Drivers' Behavior in Virtual Environment Can Become a Road Design Tool: A Case Study

Whatever the road layout, the driver uses his capacity for reading the infrastructure and surrounding environment in order to gather information useful for safe and effective actions to be applied to the vehicle. Driving is therefore mainly the result of a psychological process that translates data, signals and direct/indirect messages into behavior, which is continuously adapted to the exchange of varying stimuli between man, environment and vehicle. However, these stimuli are at times not perceived and at others perceived but not understood by the driver, even if they derive from tools specifically conceived for his safety. The result is unsafe behavior of vehicle drivers. During recent years, the authors have done research on the role of vertical signs and horizontal markings in safe driving and obtained confirmation that both signs and markings – as usually conceived during design by force of standards, regulations and law - are not sufficient to constrain the behavior as required. The conclusion is that the road environment needs to be radically redesigned. For this reason, the research has been transferred from road to laboratory, with the purpose of a better understanding of drivers’ action-reaction mechanisms by means of a simulator. The driving simulator can help in developing, from road to laboratory, the study of new road design tools (geometrical, compositional, constructive ones, street furniture, etc.), because it can be used to evaluate solutions before their usefulness is proved on the road. The research demonstrated the reliability of the approach in the discrimination of design choices by means the interpretation of behaviors of people engaged in virtual driving.