Welcome on piarc.org!

PIARC (World Road Association), founded in 1909 and comprising 125 member governments from all over the world, is the global forum for exchange of knowledge and experience on roads, road transport policies and practices. With consultative status to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, the Association is contributing to a stable and sustainable global development of the road and transport sector.

This site uses cookies to optimize its operation. They allow you to securely access your personal space and download our publications. You accept their use by clicking on the "Accept" button.

Human factors guidelines for a safer man-road interface

In the case of road safety, the Human Factors concept considers road characteristics that influence a driver's right or wrong driving actions. It understands the causes of road users' operational mistakes as the first step in a chain of actions which may proceed to an accident. Many often observed operational mistakes result from a direct, subconscious interaction between road characteristics and road users' threshold limit values of perception, information processing and action. Because the driver's reaction characteristics can-not be changed, attention should be focused on a self-explaining road design.

This guideline explains the relationship between several road characteristics that trigger wrong perception and therefore also wrong driving reactions, most of which happen subconsciously.

Detailed examples and sketches allow the engineer to understand the relationship between misleading and irritating road character-istics and operational mistakes. They can be used as a kind of checklist in "on-the-spot" investigation of black spots or single vehicle accidents or in road safety inspections (RSI). They can also be used to qualify planning and design processes in road safety audits (RSA).

Information sheet

  • Date: 2016
  • Author(s): Comité technique 3.2 Gestion des risques liés aux routes / Technical Committee 3.2 Risk management for roads
  • Domain(s): Road Safety
  • Type: 2016R20EN - Technical Report
  • PIARC Ref.: 2016R20EN
  • ISBN: 2-84060-408-2
  • Number of pages: 78