The role of route familiarity in driving behaviour

Differences in driving behaviour due to the presence of users familiar (or unfamiliar) with the road are considered in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) procedure used to evaluate the level of service of Freeways and Highways. However, although considered, the matter is largely unexplored: there is a lack of theoretical foundations and data on determining the impact of route familiarity on accident rates, speed choice and risk perception. On the other hand, some literature studies confirm that route familiarity is influential on driving behavior, encouraging research in this sense. In this paper, the authors propose some possible relationships between route familiarity and road safety by considering an experiment carried out on a two lane rural road and, in particular, by analysing how the habit of driving on a given route could be influential in speed choice, risk perception and, potentially, on accident rates too.