The Effect of Road Visualization Method on Driver’s Road View Perception

The main objective of the research presented in this paper was to investigate the conditionings of the perception of road-view, related directly to road safety, and in particular, to elaborate experimental research method for road view evaluation. The experimental laboratory method of perceptual properties evaluation for the two contrasting road visualisation techniques, static and dynamic, has been designed and tested This experiment has shown that drivers are able, based both on still pictures and on motion road views, to discriminate different levels of curvature and angle of curves. The results revealed the complexity of the effects, expressed in significance of multi factorial interactions. The method applied have been tested for practical use in computer aided 3D road design evaluation. The main conclusion is that the degree of simplification of the method is not directly proportional to the evaluation results accuracy. The perceptual properties of different visualisation techniques can be graded in terms of the target, time-saving and costeffectiveness requirements.