Evaluation of Effectiveness of Horizontal Pavement Marking on Reduction of Vehicles’ Speed

In the present study, Behavioral Evaluation of drivers' performances is been considered. Based on different studies, High speed is known as one of most causes of accidents occurrences or the increase of accidents severity. Thus, transportation researchers are always looking forward the presentation of effective solutions about the decrease of vehicles speed. In this study, effect one type of pavement marking as a traffic calming system (Speed Limitation on pavement) was considered on drivers' performance in real and virtual (driving simulation) environments .Results of Simulation of 60 participants' performance (39 men, 21 women, at least 3 years driving, Age Average: 27.2 and S.D: 5.7) using driving simulator showed that drivers drove using safer behavior (less speeds) after the implementation of pavement marking. Based on results, speeds average decreased from 91.87 km/h to 77.21km/h. Also, the relative displacement of vehicle decreased from 44 cm to 31 cm. In the real environment, analysis of 1227 vehicles (before the study) and 1073 vehicles (after study) indicated that vehicles' speed average after the implementation of pavement driving decreased from 86.38 km/h to 79.12 km/h. Moreover, the result of the  T-test showed a high similarity between the results of real and virtual environments.