The influence of landscape intervention used as an alertness maintaining ‘tool’ on driving behaviour

Abstract

Monotony, caused by deficiencies in the visual reference, can increase the risk of road accidents. This paper focuses on using landscape intervention as an alertness maintaining ‘tool’ to counter monotony. Therefore, a driving simulator experiment with four different scenes was designed. One is the control group with no landscape. The other three are landscapes with different spatial patterns. The spatial patterns were treatments combing the different graphic shapes and different enclosure degrees. Twenty-six subjects were required to drive in the centre of the right lane with a speed limit of 80 km/h as an alertness task. To assess the impact of different landscapes on driving behaviour, speed, steering wheel angle, and lane position were analysed. The results indicated a significant advantage of alertness maintaining of semi-open chevron landscape. Speeding and lane crossing has been significantly improved (p < 0.05). Also, the adequate length of the semi-open chevron landscape based on the alertness threshold of steering wheel angle SampEn is longer than the other spatial patterns. This work can help to develop more efficient monotony countermeasures with landscape intervention. It also provides valuable information for methods of adequate duration determination in alertness maintaining ‘tool’ based on driving behaviour.