Road user recognition of rural roads: the role of road characteristics and information provision in the classification of roads

The National Mobility Council in 2003 agreed on the Essential Recognizability Characteristics ('EHK'), which should ensure in the near future that roads in the Netherlands are recognizable to road users. These EHK consist of a combination of edge marking and separation of driving directions that is different for each road category. This study investigated the extent to which roads with EHK are really recognizable and distinguishable for road users, whether they evoke the correct expectations, and the extent to which variation in layout affects expectations. The study also wanted to know which road and environment characteristics play a role in recognizing road categories. A third question was whether providing information about roads beforehand leads to a better recognition. As recognition is based on categorizing that which people observe, the above mentioned questions were studied by using a photograph sorting task. The study was limited here to rural roads. This report may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/R-2006-16.pd