Assessment of Marking Effectiveness on Traffic Calming with Driving Simulator

Considering the high rate of road accidents, this study sought to assess the impact of road surface markings as an approach to traffic calming. For this purpose, the experiment was planned and conducted in a driving simulator. 40 participants took part in this experiment; however, the data obtained from one of them was removed due to a malfunction of the simulator. The remaining 39 participants, (32 males 7 female) with a mean age of 28 years and a minimum of 3 years of driving experience travelled over 5,000 km were investigated. Participants were subjected to one base scenario without any signs, and four scenarios including continuous transverse bars, peripheral transverse bars, dragon’s teeth marking, and marginal hatched marking. In each scenario, data regarding speed and vehicle lateral position were collected and analyzed. The speed and lateral position profiles were drawn for each scenario. Results showed that the average driving speed reduced in a range from 12 to 15 km/h in three of the scenarios with interventions. However, in the scenario with marginal hatched marking, reduction amount was equal to 21/9 km/hr. The lateral displacement of the drivers increased in the first scenario and not much reduced in the second and third. On the other hand, a reduction equal to 17/3 cm was spotted in lateral displacement of vehicles in the fourth scenario in which marginal hatched marking was implemented.