Knowledge of landmarks along the motorway was tested at three different points on different motorways. A questionnaire tested the ability to classify a landmark (exit, junction, bridge or tunnel) as "passed", "to come", or "irrelevant", that is r. on the individual stretch. Routes (specified as a stretch of motorway between two main towns named) and road numbers had as a fourth response category "this road". Four groups of 90 drivers each were interviewed: businessmen, commuters, truck drivers, and leisure drivers. Landmark knowledge appeared to be a joint function of passing frequency and interest in, or attention to, the motorway. Commuters were the least interested of all tour groups; despite their considerably higher passing frequency they had the same general knowledge level as truck drivers. Motorway knowledge of businessmen was only slightly below that of these two groups. Leisure drivers had the lowest passing frequency and concomitantly poorest knowledge. With regard to the different types of landmark, the results showed that with tunnels as a favourable exception, no landmarks are 100% known. Routes, such as "Amersfoort-Zwolle", and exit names are reasonably well known; bridges are less well known; while road numbers and junctions are poorly known. Traffic information will thus be understood better when a junction is referred to by its own name (e.g. Oudenrijn or Leidschendam) rather than a reference in terms of "the intersection with road A..". The traffic information should, of course, choose that landmark which is best known to the public; for example, a traffic jam before a junction should be broadcast with reference to a tunnel, an exit, or a bridge before the traffic jam, in that order of preference, rather than with reference to the junction itself. A final recommendation was to include a global compass direction of the traffic concerned in the message, because global orientation of the journey was known very well; for example, over 90% knew that the Amersfoort-Zwolle route heads approximately North-East. However, this favourable result may be limited to the specific sample of drivers and/or of questionnaire points; the fact that all drivers questioned - had to travel a motorway stretch of at least 30 km may have made them more aware of spatial orientation. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting