Effect of Road Geometry on Driver Eye Blink Rate

Abstract: Safety on roads is a growing concern as accidents cause social and economic losses. Geometric design consistency can be considered as an engineering tool to evaluate the safety performance of road design. Among different measures to evaluate geometric consistency, driver workload measure directly considers the effect of geometry on drivers. The rate of eye blink can be used as a measure of driver’s work load on curves. The objective of this paper is to correlate driver eye blink rate on horizontal curves on two lane rural highways. Preliminary analysis showed that radius, curve length, deflection angle, shoulder width and minimum sight distance available at curves are found to be correlated to rate of eye blinking either directly or based on their deviation from normal values

Keywords: Design Consistency, Driver Workload, Road Geometry, Eye Blink, Road Safety, Rural Highway.