Evaluating the clarity of highway entrance-ramp directional signs

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2010

A new terminal building resulting in the expansion of the road network was built at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada. A laboratory study was carried out to assess the effectiveness of the proposed guide signs. Participants' decision times and the accuracy of the lane choices selected to reach a provided destination were measured as they responded to a sequence of road signs guiding them into and out of the airport presented on a desktop computer. The key results were as follows: participants showed high response accuracies and fast response times for signs for airport entry, the split between terminals, and the split between arrivals and departures; signs listing the airport terminals for nine airlines on each sign were associated with excessive response times; the split to parking at the arrivals–departures–parking decision point was misunderstood by one-third to one-half of drivers, who assumed that they could continue to the curbside, expecting to find parking...

Ergonomics, 2019

Traffic sign comprehension is significantly affected by their compliance with ergonomics design principles. Despite the UN Convention, designs vary among countries. The goal of this study was to establish theoretical and methodological bases for evaluating the design of conventional and alternative signs. Thirty-one conventional signs and 1-3 alternatives for each conventional sign were evaluated for their compliance with three ergonomics guidelines for sign design: physical and conceptual compatibility, familiarity, and standardization. Twenty-seven human factors and ergonomics experts from ten countries evaluated the signs relative to their compliance with the guidelines. Analysis of variance across alternatives revealed that for 19 of the 31 signs, an alternative design received a significantly higher rating in its ergonomics design than the conventional sign with the same meaning. We also found a very high correlation between the experts' ratings and comprehension from previous studies. In conclusion, many countries use signs for which better alternative designs exist, and therefore UN Convention signs should be re-examined, and ergonomics experts evaluation can serve as a good surrogate for road users' comprehension surveys.

Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2006

Psympathic : Jurnal Ilmiah Psikologi

Insufficient comprehension of traffic signs among motorcyclists is a contributing factor to traffic accidents. Furthermore, the ability to comprehend these signs is closely tied to the cognitive process of accurately interpreting the information conveyed, with one of the key influencing factors being the representation of signs themselves. Therefore, this research aimed to examine the effect of sign types on the understanding of traffic signs, utilizing an experimental research approach that employed a between-subject, randomized multi-group design. A sample of 80 motorcyclists aged 17-25 residing in the Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi (Jabodetabek) areas was involved in the research. Participants were exposed to ten unfamiliar warning signs displayed on a computer, presented in three different formats, namely symbol, text, and symbol + text. Understanding of traffic signs was measured by level of signs comprehension (accuracy). The results showed that signs types sign...

IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2020

Current research work investigates road user's comprehension of different traffic control devices. Sample demographics were taken into consideration such as age, gender, and educational background. Twenty regulatory and warning signs were examined in this study. These signs vary from simple 'No parking' sign to more tricky ones such as 'Divided highway' sign. In addition, the questionnaire includes other questions related to road safety, condition of roads signs, and feeling of safety as a driver and as a pedestrian. These signs were selected based on their popularity among other road signs. The selected sample was over 100 people from different regions in Iraq (mainly southern provinces and the capital Baghdad). Only 16 % of selected sample answered with yes when asked about feeling safe as a driver, whereas 29% feels safe as a pedestrian. None of the respondents got all the 20 signs meaning correct, and the highest percent of correct sign meaning was associated...

Centre For Accident Research Road Safety Qld Faculty of Health Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation School of Psychology Counselling, 2013

The use of intelligent transport systems is proliferating across the Australian road network, particularly on major freeways. New technology allows a greater range of signs and messages to be displayed to drivers. While there has been a long history of human factors analyses of signage, no evaluation has been conducted on this novel, sometimes dynamic, signage or potential interactions when co-located. The purpose of this driving simulator study was to investigate drivers' behavioural changes and comprehension resulting from the co-location of Lane Use Management Systems with static signs and (Enhanced) Variable Message Signs on Queensland motorways. A section of motorway was simulated, and nine scenarios were developed which presented a combination of signage cases across levels of driving task complexity. Two higher-risk road user groups were targeted for this research on an advanced driving simulator: older (65+ years, N=21) and younger (18-22 years, N=20) drivers. Changes in sign co-location and task complexity had small effect on driver comprehension of the signs and vehicle dynamics variables, including difference with the posted speed limit, headway, standard deviation of lane keeping and brake jerks. However, increasing the amount of information provided to drivers at a given location (by co-locating several signs) increased participants' gaze duration on the signs. With co-location of signs and without added task complexity, a single gaze was over 2s for more than half of the population tested for both groups, and up to 6 seconds for some individuals.

The main objective of this research is to assess the effectiveness of Variable Message Signs (VMS) information during driving. The results show that significant differences in driving conditions occur if the driver does not understand the sign. The related VMS approaching speed decreases more than 5% if the sign is not understood. On the contrary when the driver understands the message the speed profile is almost stable. Moreover the pressure on the accelerator pedal decreases approaching the sign and increases after it when the driver has understood the message, otherwise the pressure on the pedal keeps on decreasing.

2013

The use of intelligent transport systems is proliferating across the Australian road network, particularly on major freeways. New technology allows a greater range of signs and messages to be displayed to drivers. While there has been a long history of human factors analyses of signage, no evaluation has been conducted on this novel, sometimes dynamic, signage or potential interactions when co-located. The purpose of this driving simulator study was to investigate drivers' behavioural changes and comprehension resulting from the co-location of Lane Use Management Systems with static signs and (Enhanced) Variable Message Signs on Queensland motorways. A section of motorway was simulated, and nine scenarios were developed which presented a combination of signage cases across levels of driving task complexity. Two higher-risk road user groups were targeted for this research on an advanced driving simulator: older (65+ years, N=21) and younger (18-22 years, N=20) drivers. Changes in sign co-location and task complexity had small effect on driver comprehension of the signs and vehicle dynamics variables, including difference with the posted speed limit, headway, standard deviation of lane keeping and brake jerks. However, increasing the amount of information provided to drivers at a given location (by co-locating several signs) increased participants' gaze duration on the signs. With co-location of signs and without added task complexity, a single gaze was over 2s for more than half of the population tested for both groups, and up to 6 seconds for some individuals.

Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 2002

The relationship between drivers' personal characteristics and their comprehension of posted signs is investigated in this study. The characteristics considered here include: experience, accident per experience ratio, age, marital status, sex type, nationality, educational background and monthly income. The populations sampled are from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. A total of 28 posted signs were considered.

Transportation Research Record, 2009

tigated what features of a sign make it comprehensible and how well varying demographic groups comprehend signs. The studies have also examined how the placement and type of traffic signs affect comprehensibility. Liu (2) asserted that drivers could more accurately remember purely pictorial signs than signs with lots of text, but search time for signs like these was longer. This same study suggested that too much information should not be included on one sign; if needed, signs could be separated and spread over a distance to encourage a "back-and-forth search strategy," which increased the accuracy rate of sign comprehension in the study. Crundall and Underwood (3) propose that using repetitive signs that lead to the hazard might be beneficial for comprehension. Additionally, according to studies in Hong Kong, people are better able to guess the meaning of a sign when it has at least one of five features: familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, meaningfulness, and semantic closeness (4). Another study concerning the comprehensibility of signs investigated conspicuity, memorability, comprehension, and priming (5). Drivers' comprehension of certain sign formats in the study varied depending on the type of sign used with each format. For example, a flashing format only helped slightly in some categories but was much more effective in others. Additionally, Charlton (5) offered that sign priming offers "considerable potential benefits" and should be studied further. Crundall and Underwood (3) also found that priming drivers to recognize signs could be used to help design and place road signs and also might suggest that certain sign-reading processes are developed with experience. Several studies have examined the comprehension of traffic signs in the older population. Dewar et al. (6) investigated highway sign comprehensibility, finding that many signs were not well-understood, particularly in the older age group. Dewar et al. (6) redesigned and modified some signs but found that these changes were not significantly helpful in overall comprehension for all age groups and particularly did not benefit the older age group. They found that familiar symbols are comprehended more easily than unfamiliar ones and suggest a public education campaign to teach people about miscomprehended signs. However, in countries other than the United States, some studies have shown that "contrary to expectation," education level and amount of time with a driver's license were better predictors of comprehension than age group among other factors (7). In a study of traffic signs in Arabian Gulf countries, young people were least likely to comprehend signs (8), and in a later study, age, marital status, experience, and crash rates had no effect on comprehension, although the authors hint that findings about the relationship between comprehension and age may vary between the United States and Saudi Arabia (9).