Citation

Costello SB, Goluchowski MT. Road Transp. Res. 2007; 16(1): 31-42.

Affiliation

Ryan Hanley Consulting Engineers, Sherwood House, Galway, Ireland.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Australian Road Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A Land Transport New Zealand research contract was granted in mid-2004 to study driver perception of, and reaction to, attenuator vehicles operating in work zones. The need for the research was highlighted by a number of recent crash events involving truck mounted attenuators at work zones. This resulted in two consecutive studies. The first study, reported in a separate paper, recorded and analysed driver reaction to a range of visual enhancement systems (VES) mounted on attenuator vehicles in a live operating environment during day and night. The second study, which is reported in this paper, compared the best performers from the first study with a new VES that incorporated a mobile advance warning system and represented overseas practice. Significant differences in performance were found between systems incorporating a mobile advance warning system and those that did not. Of particular importance is the reduction in the number of vehicles entering the critical zone directly behind the attenuator vehicle for those setups incorporating advance warning. The results of the research are expected to be incorporated into the Code of Practice for Temporary Traffic Management.