Presentation
Effects of Road Sign Design Features on International Driver Comprehension of Road Signs
DescriptionThis research investigates the comprehension of current U.S. road signs by English speakers. An online questionnaire was developed and used to explore the relationships between driver’s road sign comprehension, rankings of design features, and responses to a revised driver behavior questionnaire (DBQ). The results show that participants with better English proficiency tend to rate U.S. road signs with higher degree of simplicity, concreteness, meaningfulness, familiarity, and semantically closeness. While demographic factors do not affect comprehension levels, nationality significantly influences driver behavior. Two principal components, Slip_Lapse and Violation_Mistake, were identified from the DBQ responses by principal component analysis. However, only Slip_Lapse significantly influences road sign comprehension, indicating that individuals with higher Slip_Lapse scores have a worse understanding of road signs. Conversely, two of the five surveyed design features—concreteness and familiarity—positively correlate with comprehension, suggesting that signs with higher scores on these two features tend to be better understand.
Contributors
MS student
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
Event Type
Lecture
TimeThursday, September 12th3:40pm - 4pm MST
LocationFLW Salon C
Safety
DEI