The current project was undertaken to determine whether there is any change in driving behaviour in the presence or absence of billboards. Several measures of eyeglance location were used as primary measures of driver visual behaviour. Additional measures were included to provide further insight into driving performance -- these included speed variation and lane deviation. The overall conclusion from this study is that the presence of billboards does not cause a change in driver behaviour in terms of visual behaviour, speed maintenance, or lane keeping. A rigorous examination of individual billboards that could be considered to be the most visually attentiongetting demonstrated no relationship between glance location and billboard location. Driving performance measures in the presence of these specific billboards generally showed less speed variation and lane deviation. Thus, even in the presence of the most visually attention-getting billboards, neither visual behaviour nor driving performance changed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract