Investigating the impact of innovative treatments on driving behavior at school bus stops: A driving simulator study

Abstract

The illegal overtaking/crossing of stopped school buses has been identified as one of the leading causes of students' injuries and fatalities. The likelihood of students in getting involved in a school bus-related crash increases during loading/unloading. The main objective of this driving simulator study was to study the effectiveness of different treatments in improving students' safety by reducing the illegal overtaking/crossing of stopped school buses. Treatments used in this research are LED, Road Narrowing and Red Pavement. All proposed treatments were compared with the control condition (i.e., typical condition in the State of Qatar). Seventy-two subjects with valid Qatari driving license were invited to participate in this study. Each subject was exposed to three situations (i.e., Situation 1: the school bus is stopped in the same traveling direction, Situation 2: the school bus is stopped in the opposite traveling direction, Situation 3: the school bus is not present at the bus stop). Results showed that LED and Road Narrowing treatments were effective in reducing the illegal overtaking/crossing of stopped school buses. Moreover, the stopping behavior for drivers in LED and Road Narrowing was more consistent compared to the Red Pavement and control conditions. Finally, LED and Road Narrowing treatments motivated drivers to reduce their traveling speed by 5.16 km/h and 5.11 km/h, respectively, even with the absence of the school bus. Taking into account the results from this study, we recommend the proposed LED and Road Narrowing as potentially effective treatments to improve students' safety at school bus stop locations.