DRIVER ATTITUDES CONCERNING ASPECTS OF HIGHWAY NAVIGATION

A comprehensive questionnaire dealing with various aspects of highway navigation was developed, pretested, and administered to a demographically representative sample of the U.S. driving population. The sample was drawn from a group of paid subjects engaged in highway navigation experiments. The analysis of 125 completed and usable questinnaires is presented. In addition to background information on demographics and on driving experience, topics addressed included route selection, behavior under directional uncertainty, distance-time-costs trade-offs, and attitudes toward proposed remedial measures. The data obtained indicate that drivers are, generally, fairly well satisfied with their ability to perform route-planning or route-following tasks effectively and believe that the major constraints on their effectiveness arise from the unavailabilty of adequate and accurate route and traffic information. This satisfaction is, however, not supported by data on the extent of excess travel due to navigational waste. Furthermore, answers to a number of questions indicated an insufficient appreciation of the complexities of determining optimum routes and of the extent and seriousness of the problem of navigational waste.