Vehicle guidance by delineation systems at night.

Abstract Car and road designs are considered to be better when they require less driver attention and allow drivers to behave more as a supervisory controller in coping with normal, multi-task driving. In this paper an example is presented with respect to road design and, more specifically, with respect to various configurations of delineation on wet roads at night. The criteria for supervisory control are focused on drivers' observation strategy in terms of ‘free times’ available for tasks beyond lateral vehicle control, on drivers' control strategy in terms of amplitudes and frequencies of steering-wheel movements, and on the overall driving performance in terms of variations in lateral position and yaw rate. The research findings on straight and curved roads recommend the necessity of using delineation devices at both sides of the traffic lane by the implementation of profiled stripes, raised pavement markers at the location of the centre and/or lane boundaries, or post-mounted delineators just beside ...