Two experiments evaluated the feasibility of a pavement treatment to alert blind pedestrians when vehicles have yielded to them at double-lane roundabouts. The first experiment was conducted on a closed course with seven visually impaired individuals. The pavement treatment resulted in significantly more and quicker yield detections than the control condition. However, the number of false positive detections was problematic. The second experiment was conducted at an operating double-lane roundabout with five of the participants from the first study. In the field, the pavement treatment was not effective, probably because the majority of vehicles that yielded did not reach the treated area before stopping. The results were not encouraging for the development of alerting systems at double-lane roundabouts. The challenges to be overcome before an alerting system might be feasible are discussed.
Samenvatting