DRIVER PERCEPTIONS OF TRAFFIC-CALMING VERSUS ACTIVE ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS IN WORK ZONES

摘要

Many highway agencies wrestle with the question as to how best use enforcement personnel to improve work zone safety. Some agencies prefer to have enforcement position themselves at key locations (often upstream of a work crew) to be a visible enforcement presence and serve a traffic-calming role. Other agencies prefer to have enforcement personnel actively identify, pursue and cite violators. Those favoring active enforcement efforts are concerned that use of enforcement for traffic calming purposes enforcement credibility over time, whereas those favoring traffic calming use of enforcement worry that pursuit and citation activities periodically moves enforcement vehicle away from its desired position relative to the work zone and so the traffic calming effect at that location is temporarily lost. In this paper, results are presented of a survey of driver perceptions and self-reported behaviors when encountering enforcement vehicles and personnel in work zones. Responses from regions where enforcement is deployed exclusively for traffic-calming purposes are compared to regions where enforcement is deployed exclusively for identification, pursuit and citation of traffic law violators. Results indicate that drivers do indeed realize how enforcement is being used in a particular region, especially if it is for visibility and attention-getting purposes. However, although drivers were aware of how enforcement was being used in work zones, this did not translate to a difference in how drivers believed they reacted when encountering an enforcement vehicle in a work zone, nor did it affect vehicle speed reductions when an enforcement vehicle was present in a work zone.