Evaluation of the Effectiveness on the Implementation of a Two-Way Left-Turn Lane with Educational Material in Highway PR-107 using a Driving Simulator

The road diet concept has been implemented around the United States for more than three decades. Road diets are at the early stages of implementation in Puerto Rico and the use of a Two-Way Left Turn Lane (TWLTL) will be a new and unfamiliar design for local drivers. For this reason, the effectiveness of a TWLTL was evaluated using a driving simulator with local drivers for a segment of highway PR-107 in Puerto Rico. This highway is a suburban commercial corridor without access control that had a 67% increase in crashes between 2015 and 2016. This highway was selected because of its large number of left-turn maneuvers and more than 40% of the total crashes were rear-end type crashes. The University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez Driving Simulator was used to evaluate drivers' performance by observing vehicle speeds and positions along two simulated road scenarios: 1) the existing cross-section and 2) a modified cross-section with a TWLTL. Subjects were divided into two groups: 1) subjects who received training about the correct operation on a TWLTL before the simulation runs and 2) subjects who did not receive any prior training. The results indicate a positive effect of the educational material on driver behavior. Subjects who received training about the TWLTL showed a 66% increase in maneuver improvement, less variability in the position at which they entered the TWLTL, and lower variance of the mean speed than those who did not receive TWLTL training before driving through the simulation.