An evaluation of the effectiveness of auditory speeding warnings for commercial passenger vehicles – A field study in Wuhan, China

摘要

Auditory warning of speeding behavior is considered to be one of the mosteffective methods developed to reduce the accidents involving commercial passengervehicles. Facing a complex, mixed traffic condition and a lot of risky drivingbehaviors in China, commercial passenger vehicles need an effective speedingwarning system to reduce the high accident rate related to these vehicles. Althoughmany automobile manufacturers have installed the speeding warning systems on theirvehicles, the styles of these auditory speeding warning systems are different, and nostudy has been found to investigate the effectiveness of the auditory speeding warningsystems for commercial passenger vehicles. Therefore, this paper is intent to fill sucha gap and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of three speeding warning stylesthat can be used on commercial passenger vehicles. In this study, thirty driversqualified for driving the commercial passenger vehicles are recruited and then askedto drive for four 80-km field trips on an expressway in Wuhan, China. Drivingbehavior is logged by a monitoring system and is monitored by two observers duringthese trips. Reaction time, perception time and responsive behaviors of drivers relatedto each of the three speeding warning systems are then compared. Driver’s preferenceto auditory warning styles is also collected through questionnaires after the field trip.Study results show that, under the three warning styles, driver’s biologicalcharacteristics (e.g., respiration and skin conductance) and the observed behaviorsdon’t show any significant differences, but the logged driving data show that the“Beep” sound is most effective and “Break sound” is the least, in terms of reducingspeeding duration and reaction time. Basically, the results of this study should providea good reference for developing future voice-based speed warning systems forcommercial passenger vehicles in China.