Gaze and steering strategies while driving around bends with shoulders

Mecheri, Sami; Mars, Franck; Lobjois, Régis · 2022 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1016/j.apergo.2022.103798

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Summary

This study investigates how the presence of paved shoulders on rural roads influences drivers' gaze and steering strategies when negotiating right-hand bends. While shoulders are installed to improve safety by providing a recovery area, previous research indicates they may encourage "corner-cutting," where drivers steer closer to the inner edge of a curve to maintain speed. The authors sought to determine if this behavioral adaptation is driven by changes in visual sampling, given the established coupling between gaze direction and steering control. Eighteen licensed drivers participated in a driving simulator experiment. They navigated a series of right-hand bends on a simulated two-lane rural road under six conditions created by manipulating lane width (2.75 m and 3.50 m) and shoulder width (0 m, 0.75 m, and 1.25 m). Vehicle speed was held constant at 90 km/h to isolate steering and visual behaviors. The researchers recorded lateral vehicle position and eye movements using a head-mounted eye tracker, analyzing gaze deviation relative to the tangent point of the curve. The results demonstrated that the presence of a shoulder significantly altered both visual and steering behaviors. Drivers directed their gaze further inside the bend, with a higher proportion of fixations falling beyond the tangent point toward the shoulder compared to the no-shoulder condition. Correspondingly, lateral vehicle position deviated inward throughout the curve. Drivers entered the bend further to the right and maintained a more inward trajectory at the apex and innermost point when a shoulder was present. Additionally, vehicles spent more time outside the lane boundaries in the presence of shoulders. Lane width also affected behavior; corner-cutting amplitude was larger on wider lanes, and lane departure duration was higher on narrower lanes. These findings suggest that drivers perceive shoulders in right-hand bends not merely as recovery zones but as additional space for trajectory planning, leading them to look and steer further inward. This visual shift drives the increased corner-cutting behavior. The study concludes that while shoulders reduce accident rates on straight roads, they may induce risky lateral deviations in curves. The authors recommend design interventions or driver education to encourage keeping eyes and vehicles within the driving lane when shoulders are present, highlighting the need to consider visual-motor coupling in road safety engineering.

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Topics

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• eye movements scanning
• gaze based attention detection
• steering pattern
• road geometry
• looked but failed to see
• peripheral attention

Information type

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• Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data
• Methodological Resource: tool software, measurement protocol