Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 1H9, Canada.
Accid Anal Prev. 2016 Oct;95(Pt A):138-48. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2016.07.001. Epub 2016 Jul 18.
Road geometry, vehicle characteristics, and weather conditions are all factors that impact a driver's perception of a safe or credible speed and, consequently, the driver's decision on whether or not to comply with the posted speed limit. In fact, the role a road's environment plays in a driver's perception of a credible speed limit is a topic that has attracted the interest of many researchers in recent years. Despite that, not many studies have considered using empirical data to investigate what features of the road environment influence a driver's compliance choice. This paper aims to address this matter by exploring the relationships between features of the road surroundings (geometric, temporal factors, and weather conditions) and driver compliance with speed limits. The paper uses data from almost 600 different urban roads in the city of Edmonton, at which over 35 million vehicle spot speeds were collected. Compliance was represented using a categorical ordered response variable, and mixed-effects-logistic-regression models were fitted. Two different models were built, one for arterials and another for collector roads. In general, the findings show that the more restricted drivers become, particularly on arterials, the more likely drivers are to comply with speed limits; potential restrictions include on-street parking and the absence of lateral shoulders. Furthermore, higher traffic activity during peak hours, and presumably on shoulder weekdays, both increase the likelihood of compliance on arterials. Similarly, posted speed limits and traffic volume are both positively correlated with compliance on both arterial and collector roads. The findings of this research provide evidence of the existence of an empirical relationship between road features and compliance, highlighting the importance of setting credible speed limits on roads and the possibility of achieving higher compliance rates through modifications to the road environment.
道路几何形状、车辆特性和天气条件都是影响驾驶员对安全或可信速度的感知的因素，进而影响驾驶员是否遵守规定限速的决策。事实上，道路环境在驾驶员对可信限速的感知中所起的作用是近年来许多研究人员感兴趣的话题。尽管如此，很少有研究考虑使用经验数据来研究道路环境的哪些特征会影响驾驶员的合规选择。本文旨在通过探讨道路环境特征（几何形状、时间因素和天气条件）与驾驶员遵守限速之间的关系来解决这一问题。本文使用了埃德蒙顿市近 600 条不同城市道路的数据，在这些道路上共收集了超过 3500 万条车辆瞬时速度数据。合规性使用分类有序响应变量表示，并拟合了混合效应逻辑回归模型。建立了两个不同的模型，一个用于干线道路，另一个用于集散道路。一般来说，研究结果表明，驾驶员受到的限制越大，特别是在干线道路上，驾驶员越有可能遵守限速；潜在的限制包括路边停车和缺乏侧向路肩。此外，高峰时段的交通活动增加，以及可能在肩部工作日增加，都会增加干线道路的合规可能性。同样，在干线和集散道路上，设定的限速和交通量都与合规性呈正相关。本研究的结果提供了道路特征与合规性之间存在经验关系的证据，强调了在道路上设定可信限速的重要性，以及通过对道路环境进行修改来提高合规率的可能性。
