Analysis of Sidewall Patterns in Extra-Long Freeway Tunnels Based on Driving Behavior

The tunnel sidewall is important in ensuring safety and efficiency. This study investigated the influence of the complexity of the tunnel sidewall pattern elements on driving behavior through driving simulator experiments. Three kinds of sidewall patterns with different complexity (sports icon; sports icon and ribbon; sports icon, ribbon and snowflake) was designed and compared with the tunnel without sidewall pattern, and 27 drivers participated in the experiments. Meanwhile, the speed, the standard deviation (SD) of speed, acceleration, the SD of acceleration, lateral position, accelerator power, and steering wheel angle were used as indicators to explore the significance and effect size of each indicator by one-way repeated-measures ANOVA. Thus, the influence of sidewall patterns with different element complexity on driver behavior is obtained. The results show that a reasonable design of the tunnel sidewall is beneficial to traffic safety in the tunnel and provides a theoretical basis for the design of the tunnel sidewall pattern.