| Summary |
The intersection is the crash hotspot location in Taiwan, besides, a proportion of drivers do not obey traffic rules which causing poor lane discipline while driving through intersections. The relationship among driving behavior, lane configuration and safety are inseparable, thus, this study is trying to analyze the effects of different left-turn lane configuration on drivers’ situation awareness and subjective feelings. This study focuses on answering (1) which is the better left-turn lane configuration among left-turn with full shadow, partial shadow and without shadow? and (2) is lane drop marking (dotted line) a necessary design element in shadow left-turn lane?
Videos of driving through different left-turn lane configurations, filmed from the drivers’ perspective, were presented to 30 participants who have passenger car drivers’ licenses while eye movements were recorded and providing load and risk rating at certain driving situation. (1) Eye movement, (2) theoretically correct perception and (3) subjective feelings are proposed as analysis indicators to conduct a cross-section analysis among full, partial and without shadow left-turn lane, and a before-after analysis between with and without lane drop marking; 7 research hypotheses had been proposed and tested by statistical models.
The study has shown that: drivers in full shadow left-turn lane perceive critical visual targets more correctly than in partial shadow lane, and load and risk rating are both lower than in no shadow lane. Furthermore, drivers perceive critical visual targets more correctly and have fewer load and risk feelings in the road with lane drop marking than without; the fewer fixation times on left vehicle also tells the same thing that drivers are not that interest in left vehicle because of the clear separation between left-turn and through lane by dotted line. The empirical data in this study tells that (1) Full shadow left-turn lane is the most proper left-turn lane among three different configurations, and (2) lane drop marking is a necessary design element in shadow left-turn lane. |
