TRAFFIC CHARACTERISTICS

Knowledge of traffic characteristics is useful to the highway engineer in developing highway and
transportation plans, performing economic analyses, establishing geometric design criteria, selecting and
implementing traffic control measures, and evaluating performance of transportation facilities. In this
chapter, information about road users, vehicles, and traffic flow characteristics are presented that
fundamentally bears with planning, design, and operation of highway and transport facilities.

TRAFFIC ENGINEERING, TRANSPORTATION AND TRAFFIC

TRAFFIC ENGINEERING

Traffic engineering is a comparatively new branch of engineering which deals with planning and
geometric designs of streets, roads, highways, and operating traffic systems to achieve safe, economical,
convenient and efficient movement of persons and goods.

Basic objective of traffic engineering is to provide efficient, free and rapid flow of traffic with
least amount of traffic accident.

Transportation

Transportation is the movement of humans, animals and goods from one location to another. It
is important because it enables trade between people which is essential for the development of
civilization. This field can be divided into infrastructures, vehicles, and operations.

Transportation infrastructures consists of fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways,

waterways, canals and pipelines, and terminals such as airports, stations, warehouses, and seaport.
While operations deals with the way of vehicles are operated, procedures set for the following
purposes: financing, legalities and policies.

Traffic

Traffic on roads consists of users which includes the pedestrians, animals, vehicles, streetcars,
buses, trains and other conveyances, while using the public ways for the purpose of traveling. Mainly,
there are three factors or characteristics affecting the traffic: the road user, the vehicle, and the traffic
flow characteristics.

ROAD USER CHARACTERISTICS

Human being performs different roles such as drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. in the traffic is
the most important element of traffic. It is important for a traffic engineer to study the characteristics
and limitations of the road users because it affects the ability to operate motor vehicles safely or to
serve as a pedestrian.

The various factors which can affect road user characteristics may broadly be classified under
four characteristics: Physical, Mental, Psychological and Environmental characteristics. Physical
characteristics of a road user are vision, hearing, strength, and the general reaction to the traffic
situations. Mental characteristics which affects the road user are knowledge, skills, intelligence and
literacy in traffic informations. While psychological factors such as attentiveness, anger, fear, anxiety,
phobias, superstition and most importantly, impatience may effect the traffic performance of the user
to a great extent. Lastly is the environmental conditions that can affect the behavior of a road user are
traffic streams, facilities to the traffic, atmospheric conditions and locality.

PIEV THEORY

According to PIEV (Perception, Intellection, Emotion, Volition time) theory, the total reaction
time of the driver is split into four parts. Reaction time is the time taken from an instant the object is
visible to the driver to the instant the brakes are applied.

Perception time is the time required for sensations received by the vision and hearing to be
transmitted into brain through the nervous system. Intellection time is the time required for
understanding the situation. Emotion time is the time elapsed during emotional and disturbance such as
fear and anger with reference to the situation. Volition time is taken for the final action. The total
reaction time of the road user is vary from 0.5 to 4 seconds.

Lag distance is the distance travelled by the vehicle during the total reaction time, it is given by
the formula;

(LD=vt)

where: v= speed of vehicle in m/s; t= reaction time in secs; and LD= lag distance.

VEHICULAR CHARACTERISTICS