Driving against the clock: Investigating the impacts of time pressure on taxi and non-professional drivers' safety and compliance.

Drivers often encounter time pressure, which can lead to riskier driving habits, decreased safety margins, and a higher chance of accidents. Given that taxi drivers frequently experience these conditions, this study examines how time pressure impacts the driving behaviors of both taxi and non-professional drivers. In this regard, a driving simulator experiment was carried out to assess the driving behaviors of both groups under time pressure.

Safety assessment of on-road cycling lanes: A comparative study of different layouts using driving simulator.

Over the past few decades, a growing attention has been directed toward cycling due to its positive impacts on social, economic, and health aspects. Various countries are adopting and implementing strategies to promote cycling as a daily mode of transport. The main objective of this study is to improve cyclists' safety by investigating the impact of different layouts of on-road cycle lanes at two-lane two-way roads on drivers' interactions with cyclists using driving simulator.

Rebound effects undermine carbon footprint reduction potential of autonomous electric vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles offer greater passenger convenience and improved fuel efficiency. However, they are likely to increase road transport activity and life cycle greenhouse emissions, due to several rebound effects. In this study, we investigate tradeoffs between improved fuel economy and rebound effects from a life-cycle perspective.

Aberrant driving behaviors as mediators in the relationship between driving anger patterns and crashes among taxi drivers: An investigation in a complex cultural context.

Objective: Taxis have become an integrated component of Qatar's urban transportation network due to their convenience, comfort, and flexibility. Qatar has seen an uptick in the demand for professional taxi drivers. Most Qatari taxi drivers come from developing countries with poor awareness of road safety; therefore, they regularly engage in aberrant driving behavior, leading to traffic violations and crashes.

Assessment of different pedestrian communication strategies for improving driver behavior at marked crosswalks on free channelized right turns.

Introduction: Previous studies have indicated low driver yielding rates to pedestrians in various countries. This study analyzed four different strategies to improve driver yielding rates at marked crosswalks on channelized right turn lanes at signalized intersections.

Method: A sample of 5,419 drivers was collected for four gestures using field experiments for males and females in the State of Qatar.

Safer pedestrian crossing facilities on low-speed roads: Comparison of innovative treatments.

Despite the international efforts to improve pedestrian safety in different regions of the world, pedestrian fatalities still account for around one-third of annual road traffic deaths. Residential areas are commonly characterized by high pedestrian flows, making pedestrian safety a highpriority public health issue. Different types of treatments such as ITS-based, road markings, and physical treatments have been implemented to improve pedestrian safety, however, their efficiency varies between different locations worldwide.

Autism-friendly public bus transport: A personal experience-based perspective.

Transportation plays an essential role in daily life, allowing people to participate in the community and form social relationships. Many autistic people rely on public transportation to meet their mobility needs. However, research shows that it is not always easy for them to use it.

A reliability-based weather-responsive variable speed limit system to improve the safety of rural highways.

Weather-responsive Variable Speed Limit (WRVSL) systems treat speed limits as weather-dependent random variables, as opposed to the conventional static speed limits. This study (i) evaluates drivers' response to a fixed speed limit in different road-weather conditions, and (ii) proposes an effective approach to set WRVSLs, for rural divided highways located in extremely cold regions. Study data: road-weather, and speed data, collected from a rural highway (fixed speed limit = 110 km/h), are used to (i) estimate the 85 percentile speeds of population-level speed distributions, and (ii) develop WRVSLs based on the reliability theory.

Safety and security perceptions in informal transport: the case of Tunisia.

This study aims to evaluate the perception of safety and security in informal transport in Tunisia. This research employs a questionnaire-based survey of passengers and drivers of informal transport in Tunisia. Interviews were conducted with 215 informal transport Tunisian drivers and 255 Tunisian passengers, all above 18 years of age.

Examining the role of road safety audits worldwide: exploring road safety expert's opinions.

Road safety audit (RSA) is a method used to proactively identify safety risks in road projects from planning, design, and construction stages. The effectiveness of the implementation of RSAs varies across the globe. This paper provides an understanding of road safety auditor's opinions and attitudes by using data collected from an online questionnaire filled by 408 road safety experts with varying demographic and technical backgrounds.

Using driving simulator to study the effect of crash fact signs on speeding behaviour along freeways.

A driving simulator study was utilized to evaluate a potential countermeasure for speeding behaviour in order to reduce speed spillover. The behaviour of 56 subjects was observed. Participants drove a freeway for 5300 metres before exiting onto a three-kilometre urban arterial.

The impact of rural expressway environments: drivers' attention allocation to variable message signs.

Variable Message Signs (VMS) are implemented at varying locations of the expressway. In this study, we compared the drivers' attention allocation to a 'drive safely' message on several VMS gantries that were located at six sections of typical expressway conditions in Qatar. We investigated how the expressway drivers perceive the VMS when implemented in different driving conditions (e.

Driving behavior classification at signalized intersections using vehicle kinematics: Application of unsupervised machine learning.

Driving behavior is considered as a unique driving habit of each driver and has a significant impact on road safety. This study proposed a novel data-driven Machine Learning framework that can classify driving behavior at signalized intersections considering two different signal conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that investigates driving behavior at signalized intersections with two different conditions that are mostly used in practice, i.

Can automated driving prevent crashes with distracted Pedestrians? An exploration of motion planning at unsignalized Mid-block crosswalks.

Pedestrian distraction may provoke severe difficulties in automated vehicle (AV) control, which may significantly affect the safety performance of AVs, especially at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks (UMCs). However, there is no available motion-planning model for AVs that considers the effect of pedestrian distraction on UMCs. This study aims to explore innovative approaches for safe and reasonable automated driving in response to distracted pedestrians with various speed profiles at UMCs.

Pedestrian flow characteristics through different angled bends: Exploring the spatial variation of velocity.

Common geometrical layouts could potentially be bottlenecks, particularly during emergency and high density situations. When pedestrians are interacting with such complex geometrical settings, the congestion effect might not be uniform over the bottleneck area. This study uses the trajectory data collected through a controlled laboratory experiment to explore the spatial variation of speeds when a group of people navigates through bends.

Interactions between autonomous vehicles and pedestrians at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks considering occlusions by opposing vehicles.

Visibility can be identified as one of the critical determinants for the safety performance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on unsignalized mid-block crosswalks (UMC), which may be significantly influenced by build-up environment and surrounding vehicles. This study investigates the safety performance when AVs interact with pedestrians approaching from far-side sidewalks to UMCs considering the visual occlusion of opposing vehicles. A mathematical model is proposed for judging the visibilities of objects from observers' location under the impact of visual obstacles and is embedded into an agent-based pedestrian-vehicle interaction framework.

Modelling speed behaviour in rural highways: Safety analysis of driving under adverse road-weather conditions.

This study proposes a methodical approach to model desired speed distributions under different road-weather and traffic conditions followed by identification of road-weather conditions with potentially higher safety risks in rural divided highways located in extremely cold regions. Desired speed distributions encompassing unique combinations of adverse road-weather and traffic conditions are modelled as normal distributions characterized by their means and standard deviations formulated based on two principal statistical theorems and techniques i.e.

Road safety status during COVID-19 pandemic: exploring public and road safety expert's opinions.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the status of traffic safety and the public perception of traffic safety during the during COVID-19 pandemic. Three different data sets are used in this study: road crash and traffic violation data from Qatar, and two separate questionnaire surveys (from general public and road safety experts). Results showed that during COVID-19 period, the total number of crashes in Qatar significantly reduced during the pandemic compared with the previous 5 years.

A novel agent-based framework for evaluating pedestrian safety at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks.

A critical safety problem in road networks is the conflicts on unsignalized crosswalks. Thus, a proactive approach to assess pedestrian safety performance is required. Simulating the microscopic road user behavior in a virtual platform is one of the typical approaches.

Improved traffic safety at work zones through animation-based variable message signs.

Work zones are established to provide a safe environment for all road users and road workers. However, based on the statistics, they can be considered as crash prone zones due to changes in the road alignments and the posted speed limits. In this driving simulator study, we aimed at investigating the safety impacts of a newly proposed system composed of graphical and animation-based variable message signs (VMSs) in the state of Qatar.

Do detection-based warning strategies improve vehicle yielding behavior at uncontrolled midblock crosswalks?

Pedestrians being the most vulnerable road users account for a large proportion of injuries and fatalities from road traffic crashes. Pedestrians are involved in around one-third of the whole fatalities coming from the road traffic crashes in the state of Qatar. In areas with uncontrolled midblock crosswalks, it is very crucial to improve drivers' alertness and yielding behavior.

Optical pavement treatments and their impact on speed and lateral position at transition zones: A driving simulator study.

Transition zones are a road section where posted speed drops from higher to lower limits. Due to the sudden changes in posted speed limits and road environment, drivers usually do not adapt to the posted speed limits and underestimate their traveling speed. Previous studies have highlighted that crash rates are usually higher in these sections.

Introducing a multi-variate classification method: Risky driving acceptance among different heterogeneous driver sub-cultures.

Introduction: Heterogeneous driving populations with many different origins are likely to have various sub-cultures that comprise of drivers with shared driver characteristics, most likely with dissimilar traffic safety cultures. An innovative methodology in traffic safety research is introduced which is beneficial for large datasets with multiple variables, making it useful for the multi-variate classification of drivers, driving attitudes and/or (risky) driving behaviours.

Method: With the application of multidimensional scaling analysis (MDS), this study explores traffic safety culture in the State of Qatar using a questionnaire and investigates the similarity patterns between the questionnaire items, aiming to classify attitudes towards risky driving behaviours into themes.

Innovative countermeasures for red light running prevention at signalized intersections: A driving simulator study.

The change interval, which includes the yellow and all-red times, plays a crucial role in the safety and operation of signalized intersections. During this interval, drivers not only need to decide to stop or go but also have to interact with drivers both in front and behind, trying to avoid conflicting decisions. Red light running and inconsistent stopping behavior may increase the risk for angular and rear-end crashes.