Traffic jam: a new method to reduce drivers’ illusion of the road slope by drawing stripe patterns on the side walls

Traffic jam: a new method to reduce drivers’ illusion of the road slope by drawing stripe patterns on the side walls A Tomoeda¹, S Tsuinashi², A Kitaoka³, K Sugihara⁴
¹Meiji University / JST, CREST, Japan ²College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University, Japan ³Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Japan ⁴Graduate School of Advanced Math. Sci., Meiji University, Japan Contact: atom@isc.meiji.ac.jp
The spontaneous traffic jams occur as a result of the enhancement of fluctuations of velocity in a certain density of vehicles. Sag sections are one of the famous places where we observe such traffic jams. Although sag sections actually are going uphill, they incline moderately. Drivers do not realize that they are going up, and hence drive without accelerating appropriately. Accordingly, the sag section produces the fluctuation of velocity as a trigger of traffic jams and it is enhanced in a certain density. This trigger is considered as a result of visual illusion where drivers are not able to correctly judge the slope of the road and fail to realize that it is going uphill. This illusion is called visual illusions of a vertical gradient, and also observed on many actual roads such as Yashima Driveway in Japan. Apparently, methods to prevent drivers from incorrectly recognizing road inclination through visual illusions are essential to achieve the smooth flow of traffic, since the correct recognition will reduce the fluctuation of velocity. In this contribution we propose the stripe pattern to prevent drivers from the visual illusions of a vertical gradient and verify to what extent visual illusions can be controlled.

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