Abstract
Traffic crashes in suburban school zones pose a serious safety concern due to a higher presence of school-age pedestrians and cyclists as well as potential speeding issues. A study that investigated speed selection and driver behavior in school zones was carried out using two populations from different topographical and cultural settings: Puerto Rico and Massachusetts. A school zone from Puerto Rico was recreated in driver simulation scenarios and local drivers who are familiar with the environment were used as subjects. The Puerto Rico school simulation scenarios were replicated with subjects from Massachusetts to analyze the impact of drivers’ familiarity on the school-roadway environment. Twenty-four scenarios were built with pedestrians, on-street parked vehicles, and traffic flow used as simulation variables in the experiment. Results are presented in terms of speed behavior, reaction to the presence of pedestrians, speed compliance, and mean reduction in speeds for both familiar and unfamiliar drivers.
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Acknowledgements
The authors want to express their gratitude to SAFER-SIM program for sponsoring the research, Dr. Saylisse Davila for her technical assistance in the development of the experimental design and statistical analysis, Ricardo Garcia, Yindhira Taveras, Carolyn Arroyo, and Ivelisse Ramos, graduate research assistants, and Rocio Sotomayor, undergraduate research assistant, for their collaboration on the development of this research, and Andrea Valdes for editing the final manuscript.
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Valdés, D. et al. (2020). Speed Behavior in a Suburban School Zone: A Driving Simulation Study with Familiar and Unfamiliar Drivers from Puerto Rico and Massachusetts. In: Stanton, N. (eds) Advances in Human Factors of Transportation. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 964. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20503-4_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20503-4_30
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