The effect of road edgelines on car driving in darkness is investigated with an instrumented vehicle. It appears that there are clear differences between driving on roads with two alternative edgelines, continuous and dashed edgelines, and roads with an axis line or without lines. The subjects drive faster in the edgelined roads compared with roads not edgelined, but not faster than on the axis-lined roads. Their lateral position on the edgelined roads is more to the middle of the road than on the axis-lined road and much more than on the no-line roads. Swerving is larger on the edgelined and axis-lined roads compared with the no-lines road, but on the no-lines road there are larger steering wheel steering wheel movements. Concerning the mental effort, with respect to the heart rate measures there is only a difference between resting and driving: there are no differential effects between the various road types.
Abstract