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One of the building blocks of the Dutch success in road safety is the Sustainable Safety approach. This philosophy specifies that road safety should be a design requirement in road traffic with a focus on the use of human characteristics as a starting point, considering both humans’ physical vulnerability and cognitive capabilities and limitations. Roads are to be categorized according to their function and should be self-explaining as much as possible. Human factors should be included in the design process right from the beginning to ensure that the design meets fundamental human factors requirements. Following a brief general description of the driving task, of the cycle of human information processing, and of the levels of task performance, this paper will focus on some human factors rules to take the human as the measure of things in highway design and operation. An integrated road systems design should anticipate the potential occurrence of inadvertent aberrations. Situational awareness, workload, attention, road users’ perception and collection of relevant information from the environment, and the role of road users’ expectancy, are major human factors aspects to take into account for a safe road design. The effects of traffic infrastructure and road design on safe driving behaviour are illustrated by some examples (bad and good) to make road systems more resilient and robust against human error, and to make information carriers mutually consistent and uniform within their context.

Individual information earners should meet basic ergonomic principles to be visible, clear and understandable for the road user.

Individual information elements should be mutually consistent and uniform within their context, and should not confuse the driver.

One should take into account inadvertent aberrations of the system (for example a broken signalling device) or of the road user (is not always paying full attention to the driving task). Inadvertent aberrations should not result in accidents (principle of graceful degradation).

Driving involves three hierarchical task levels: viz. navigation, guidance and control. For each level, task load varies depending on time and place. In road system design it is important to distinguish between all three levels.

Literatuurstudies, simulatorexperimenten, laboratoriumexperimenten en enquetes uitgevoerd in het MASTER project geven inzicht in de factoren die de snelheidskeuze van automobilisten bepalen en leiden tot aanbevelingen voor snelheidsbeheersingsstrategieën.

Bij modelleren van bestuurdersgedrag is het van belang kritiek van normale gebeurtenissen te onderscheiden. Tijdmaten als TTC en TLC geven hiervoor de criteria.

Op 80-km wegen lijkt de snelheid alleenverlaagd te kunnen worden metfysieke maatregelen aan de weg. In Drenthe is een basispakket ontwikkeld, mede op basis van een simulatorstudie en in de praktijk getest met een succesvol resultaat.

Visuele occlusietechnieken blijken een effectief middel om de visuele werklast van automobilisten te bepalen, zowel bij het bepalen van de minimale informatie die ze nodig hebben als voor evaluatie van nieuwe telematicatoepassingen zoals Heading Control en Adaptive Cruise Control