The standard designs of rural roads vary a lot and show several failures affecting the road safety negatively. Especially the low-volume roads (local roads, ADT < 3,000) are designed inappropriately. One approach to achieve a high quality road network is the standardization of certain road types, which are supposed to have similar road characteristics within their category, but show significant differences towards the other road types. In the course of the development of the new guidelines of rural roads in Germany “Richtlinien fr die Anlage von Landstraßen (RAL)” (1) low-volume roadswill be displayed by a single lane cross-section to make them distinguishable to common highways (identification of low-volume roads). The paper presents the effects on the driving behavior induced by the new cross section design. Based on empiric analysis in with/without and before/after studies road sections were evaluated. The new single lane cross section for low-volume roads showed positive results. The before/after study showed thatthe average driving speed could be reduced and the lane keeping shifted towards the middle of the road by installing the new road markings both on real roads as well as in the driving simulator. Furthermore, it can be summarized that the new road marking does not result in a lower safety standard for situations with oncoming traffic because in potentially critical situations the lane keeping profiles in both directions still have enough space in between each other. Overall, the indication of design classes has positive effects on the driving behavior and therefore the safety level on roads.
Abstract