Road Curve Evaluation Based on Road View Perception Study

The main objective of the research was to investigate the perception of road curves, which is related directly to road safety, and in particular to test two experimental research methods used for road view evaluation and to evaluate the effect of visual information from static and dynamic road views on drivers’ perception of road curves. An experimental laboratory method of perceptual property evaluation for both static and dynamic road visualization techniques was designed and tested. The main conclusion is that the degree of simplification of the method is not directly proportional to the accuracy of the results. The major results of this experiment concern curve perception, which is a crucial design element according to existing theory. Based both on still pictures and on motion road views, this experiment shows that drivers are able to discriminate different levels of curvature and angle of curves and that perception of curvature is more sensitive to geometric curve properties for a dynamic presentation than for a static presentation. The degree of complexity of these effects is expressed in the significance of multifactorial interactions.