Driving simulator validation for research on driving behavior at entrance of urban underground road

Abstract

Underground urban road is a possibility for solving many existing transportation-related problems, e.g. traffic congestion. As a significant part of urban underground expressway, the entrance usually becomes the bottleneck. Improving the capacity and safety of the entrance is the key to improving the underground expressway efficiency and safety. Eight degrees of freedom driving simulator (Tongji University) is used as an analysis tool. Fifteen drivers participated in the real car experiment and driving simulator test. The speed at several characteristic sites was continuously recorded. Two Factor Analysis of Variance and ANOVA were utilized to analyze the data. The comparison of the results of the driving simulator study with those of the field study showed their reliability. The relative behavioral validity found in this study confirms that the driving simulator is a reliable tool for the analysis of driver behavior at the entrance of urban underground road.