The research question answerend within this project is whether the environment has its influence on the driving behaviour of the road user. The project is set up as an inventory and accumulates and summarises existing knowledge on the influence of the environment on the road user and driving behaviour. Also it will be indicated where knowledge is missing and recommendations will be made for future research. An inventory of the existing knowledge on the influence of the environment on driving behaviour is made by means of a literature study and an expert meeting. Included in the literature study is research conducted nationally as well as internationally. For the expert meeting experts from different areas were invited to help fill in knowledge gaps apparent from the literature study and the expert meeting are integrated in this report. For the literature study research from many research institutes has been examined, both in the Netherlands as internationally as described earlier. The relationship between the broader environment and driving behaviour has been investigated in a considerable amount of studies, however, not all studies report a quantitative relationship between the two. Nevertheless interesting results have been discovered. The results have been grouped in a number of categories: subjective appraisal and driving behaviour, obstacles and visual information and driving behaviour, road surface and driving behaviour and categorisation and driving behaviour. Within these categories most quantitative results can be found within the categories obstacles and visual information and driving behaviour. Likewise, the environment is proven to be of influence on the subjective appraisal, as well as on categorisation of the road, however, the effect of these aspects on driving behaviour is hardly ever quantified. For many effects it remains unclear whether when we find a relationship between the environment and driving behaviour this also has an effect on safety, while it also remains unclear what long-term effects may be. The method as used has proven relevant to discover knowledge as well as to indicate knowledge gaps in the area. It is concluded that research studies can be set up in the future to fill up the gaps in knowledge. It is important in this context to not study specific aspects in isolation but in relationship to each other. The next step would be to quantify the effect of the combination of different aspects on driving behaviour. (Author/publisher)
Abstract