Silver Road Design
Elderly friendly highway design
Information
Author: Ying, H.
Contributor: Van Egmond, R., Molenbroek, J., Van Doorn, E., Van Konijnenburg, P.
Faculty: Industrial Design Engineering
Department: Industrial Design
Programme: Master of Science Design for Interaction
Type: Master thesis
Date: 17-12-2010
Subject: Elderly drivers | Highway | Interchange | Road design
Abstract
Elderly Friendly Highway Design (EFHD) is done for Rijkswaterstaat. The EFHD project explores elderly drivers’ problems in the driving on highways and makes suggestions to RWS designers so as that they could take into account elderly drivers when designing and rebuilding Dutch highway in the future.
Through the literature research, observational research and creative session discussion of EFHD research, it is found that the main influences of elderly drivers on the highway interchange are their restricted vision, uncertainty, tiredness, worse judgement of distance, slow merging speed, and overload information on the road. Elderly drivers need confidence and small quantity of workload. And the road should offer a peaceful and safe driving atmosphere, convey required information efficiently and guide elderly drivers in behaving correctly. Four road design concepts are created to build elderly drivers' confidence when they merge into main traffic stream on the highway by helping them to judge a perfect timing to merge with sufficient speed and gap acceptance, and by stimulating them on main traffic stream to cooperate with merging drivers.
