Road Safety Design and Human Factor Interaction

At PITLab, our research in Road Safety Design and Human Factor Interaction focuses on understanding how infrastructure design and human behaviour interact to influence crash risk and overall road safety. One of our core projects investigates highway work zones, where technical, infrastructural, and environmental factors converge to affect driver behaviour and crash probability. This work develops predictive models that help identify high-risk scenarios and inform safer road design strategies during temporary traffic control operations.

Building on this, we study driver perception and safety, analysing how motorists perceive and respond to dynamic road environments. Combining subjective assessments with objective measures from instrumented vehicles and simulated conditions allows us to evaluate how design elements and driver expectations contribute to safety performance. These insights support evidence‑based recommendations for road layout improvements and traffic management practices.

In parallel, we examine Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) through experimental analysis and simulation to evaluate how these technologies interact with human drivers. Our goal is to understand not only how ADAS support driver decision‑making, but also how human factors such as attention, reaction time, and cognitive workload modulate system effectiveness in real driving contexts.