Driver behaviour at roadworks

• Road networks around the world are reaching a critical stage in their lifecycle.
• Transport authorities are planning significant maintenance activities with associated roadworks and traffic management.
• Traffic microsimulation is used to plan these roadworks but modelled drivers are not behaving in the same way as real drivers.
• A range of psychological explanations for this difference are reviewed.
• Guidance for incorporating these psychological factors into future models is proposed.

There is an incompatibility between how transport engineers think drivers behave in roadworks and how they actually behave. As a result of this incompatibility we are losing approximately a lane's worth of capacity in addition to those closed by the roadworks themselves. The problem would have little significance were it not for the fact a lane of motorway costs approx. £30 m per mile to construct and £43 k a year to maintain, and that many more roadworks are planned as infrastructure constructed 40 or 50 years previously reaches a critical stage in its lifecycle. Given current traffic volumes, and the sensitivity of road networks to congestion, the effects of roadworks need to be accurately assessed. To do this requires a new ergonomic approach. A large-scale observational study of real traffic conditions was used to identify the issues and impacts, which were then mapped to the ergonomic knowledge-base on driver behaviour, and combined to developed practical guidelines to help in modelling future roadworks scenarios with greater behavioural accuracy. Also stemming from the work are novel directions for the future ergonomic design of roadworks themselves.