Driving Simulator for Road Safety Design: A Comparison Between Virtual Reality Tests and In-Field Tests Monica Meocci University of Florence, Italy Alessandro Terrosi University of Florence, Italy Andrea Paliotto University of Florence, Italy Francesca La Torre Bellardoni University of Florence, Italy Irene Infante University of Florence, Italy This is a section of CONVR 2023 - Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality (DOI: 10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3) by Pietro Capone, Vito Getuli, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Nashwan Dawood, Alessandro Bruttini, Tommaso Sorbi Firenze University Press Florence 2023 https://doi.org/10.36253/10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3.20

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Virtual reality simulations conducted by driving simulators represent a methodology to assess both the quality of road design and road safety in a safe, controlled, and replicable environment. Nowadays, there are numerous studies that use driving simulators to analyze the driver's response when specific road safety treatments are planned before these are implemented. This approach allows the road designer/scientist to estimate the potential safety effectiveness of the countermeasure/design configuration considered. However, although virtual reality simulations are potentially extremely useful in the evaluation of road configuration design and treatments effectiveness, they also have cons. The two most important are the limitations in the reproducibility of the real world environment and the difference in drivers’ behavior due to the awareness that they are conducting a test. In this context, our research compared the data collected during virtual reality experiments with those collected in the field with an instrumented vehicle, after a few years from the implementation of the specific safety measure on a real road. Statistical analyses were conducted to compare the results of the two experiments to demonstrate the reliability of the virtual simulations and to identify the limitations

 driving simulator road safety virtual reality road safety treatments road safety measures effectiveness in-field test

It is available online at https://doi.org/10.36253/10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3.20

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