Impact assessment of professional drivers’ speed compliance and speed adaptation with posted speed limits in different driving environments and driving conditions

ABSTRACT

This study analyzed the impact of driving environments (real-world and simulated world) and driving conditions (no time pressure and time pressure) on speed compliance and speed adaptation. Professional car drivers were recruited, and the data was collected in real-world and simulated world under no time pressure and time pressure driving conditions. The comparison results using Wilcoxon-signed rank test showed that speed compliance and speed adaptation were not consistently significant and were not in the same direction highlighting the influence of various factors like road features and driver characteristics. The generalized linear mixed model results showed that speed compliance was relatively better in simulated world (by 3.98 kmph) than real-world. Further, speed adaptation under time pressure was about 5.86 kmph lower during real-world as compared to simulated world. The findings from this study can provide new insights on road safety strategies and policy implications for limiting speeding-related crash risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Speed compliance
• speed adaptation
• posted speed limit
• time pressure
• roadside friction, generalized linear mixed model

Acknowledgments

The authors sincerely acknowledge the funding provided by the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay for this study. The authors appreciate the efforts taken by Mrs. Rashmeet Kaur Khanuja during the initial phase of scenario generation and data collection. The last author would like to thank Fulbright Specialist program in United States and Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence program in India, for selecting him to spend time at IIT Bombay to interact and brainstorm ideas with co-authors of this paper. The authors also thank all the participants for their participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.