Incorporating Human Factors to Explain the Diving Behaviour under Adverse Weather Conditions

Abstract

Modern societies are heavily relied on efficient transportation systems for mobilizing people and goods. These systems are mainly constituted by road traffic networks. Currently, traffic demand is immense and perpetually increasing with unprecedented rates that traffic congestion has become an imminent subsequent. Over time, all this human activity that has established the status-quo of modern societies has been negatively influenced by climate change. Climate deviations are prominent in urban environments with a higher frequency and elongated time scales. Therefore, road traffic systems jeopardizing their robustness, and their resilience is at stake. A fundamental component in road traffic systems is the human factor. Nevertheless, human factors, to the contribution in traffic, are largely neglected. Some other times we consider that humans act rationally. Consequently, engineers seek answers to questions of how to incorporate the human factor into the system to explain the behaviour of human drivers under adverse weather conditions. In this contribution, an exploratory simulation study was used to put into perspective the derived conceptual frameworks and assess their performance in terms of efficiency and safety. Various psycho-cognitive mechanisms were utilized to address the human factor and rationally connected with the vehicle motion to reproduce the traffic phenomena that we observe under the conditions of rain and fog.