This project explores the potential for aesthetic highway design measures that encourage drivers to comply with speed limits and which would complement or replace visually and physically intrusive methods to reduce vehicle speed. Sketches of street scenes depicting design interventions were used as stimulus material for a series of group discussions in which a speed choice questionnaire was administered. This was followed by a small trial in the TRL driving simulator in which a subset of the participants attending the group discussions were asked to undertake a simulated drive along the road from which one of the still sketches used in the group discussions was produced. The group discussions showed tha t participants could make speed assessments from the sketches they were shown, and that the participants themselves thought these speed assessments were reasonably realistic. Pedestrians, cyclists and parked cars present in a scene resulted in very marked decreases in the assessed driving and safe speeds. Other features that reduced assessed speed were roadside trees, structures in the centre of the road, pedeestrian railings, bollards, lay-bys, bus stops and how built up the area was. Driving speeds in the simulator were similar to those the participants indicated for the sketches, suggesting that these were a valid means of assessing speed.
Samenvatting