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Theeuwes Cogn. Research (2021) 6:15 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00281-6 Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications REVIEW ARTICLE Open Access Self-explaining roads: What does visual cognition tell us about designing safer roads? Jan Theeuwes1,2* Abstract In 1995, Theeuwes and Godthelp published a paper called “self-explaining roads,” in which they argued for the devel- opment of a new concept for approaching safe road design. Since this publication, self-explaining roads (SER) became one of the leading principles in road design worldwide. The underlying notion is that roads should be designed in such a way that road users immediately know how to behave and what to expect on these roads. In other words, the environment should be designed such that it elicits adequate and safe behavior. The present paper describes in detail the theoretical basis for the idea of SER and explains why this has such a large efect on human behavior. It is argued that the notion is frmly rooted in the theoretical framework of statistical learning, subjective road categorization and the associated expectations. The paper illustrates some successful implementation and describes recent develop- ments worldwide. Signifcance statement elicits automatically the behavior that is appropriate for In 1995, the idea was put forward that a trafc environ- that type of road. In other words, the road nudges the ment should elicit safe behavior simply by its design. Tis right behavior without the need for much enforcement or idea was dubbed self-explaining roads (SER), and over education. the course of 25 years, this approach became the lead- Since its publication, the notion of SER has gained a ing principle of road design worldwide. Te current lot of momentum and is now considered the main design paper describes the psychological principles underly- principle for road authorities and departments of trans- ing the concept of SER and describes current trends and portation worldwide. In many countries across the world, developments. roads were redesigned and adapted such that the road was adapted consistent with the SER principles. Te EU Introduction Mobility and Transport committee also adopted this In a paper published in 1995, Teeuwes and Godthelp principle (see web) and has funded several research pro- were the frst to introduce the concept of self-explain- jects focusing on this issue. In 2010, the World Health ing roads (SER) as the leading principle of road design Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) (Teeuwes and Godthelp 1995; Teeuwes 1998). Te explicitly mentioned the need for “promoting the safe sys- basic notion of a self-explaining road is a “trafc envi- tem approach and the role of self-explaining and forgiving ronment which elicits safe behavior simply by its design” road infrastructure” proclaiming the decade of action for (Teeuwes and Godthelp 1995, p. 217). Te underlying road safety. idea is that the design and layout of the road environment In 2010, Charman et al. (2010) published an extensive literature review regarding self-explaining roads and the various approaches to the concept. Tis review was part *Correspondence: [email protected] th 1 Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit of a larger SPACE project funded by the 6 framework of Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 7, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The European Commission as part of the European Research Netherlands Area Network ROAD. Charman et al. (2010) concluded Full list of author information is available at the end of the article that “the self-explaining road message fell on fertile © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. Theeuwes Cogn. Research (2021) 6:15 Page 2 of 15 ground, and within a decade the terms self-explaining Selecting relevant information and avoiding distract- roads concept, self-explaining road principles, and even ing information is crucial during driving. It has been self-explaining road philosophy were in wide-spread use, estimated that over 90% of the information that a driver not just in Europe but across the globe, and often in situ- has to process is visual (Hills 1980; Sivak 1996; Spence ations far-removed from those envisaged by the original and Ho 2015). It is also known that defciencies in visual authors” (Charman et al. 2010, p. 10). attention are responsible for a large proportion of road When initially publishing this paper in 1995, we could trafc accidents (Charlton and Starkey 2013; Sabey and never have foreseen the impact of our ideas on the way Taylor 1980). Research on hazard perception has shown engineers, scientists and policy makers approach road that drivers with good hazard perception skills are less safety. In the original publication, we did not provide a involved in accidents than those drivers with low hazard solid theoretical basis for the principles underlying SER. perception, for example novice drivers (McKenna and Te goal of the present paper is to provide this theoreti- Crick 1991; Scialfa et al. 2011). Critically, accident data cal basis. It is argued that visual selection during driving have shown that in many cases, drivers that are involved is very much determined by what has been labeled by in automobile crashes do not act too late but do not act basic visual cognition theories as “selection history” (Awh at all to avoid the collision (Guo et al. 2010), suggesting et al. 2012; Teeuwes 2019). According to this idea, our that they simply did not attend to the event that ulti- past experiences of paying attention to certain objects mately resulted in a crash. Detection of potential hazards or events and not to others have a strong and enduring is particular difcult when the road environment is com- efect on what will be attended when we encounter simi- plex and unusual and the cognitive load is relatively high, lar contexts again. We argue that the efect of past driv- for example when drivers are relatively inexperienced or ing experiences will bias visual selection in an implicit drive in a foreign city (Kahana-Levy et al. 2019; Under- and automatic way, explaining why it is so important to wood et al. 2002). design roads which are consistent with these automatic Te crucial point is that in many cases human error biases. We highlight the role of statistical learning dur- plays a large role in road crashes. For example, accord- ing driving, subjective road categorization and the asso- ing to a study from 2016 of the National Highway Trans- ciated expectations. Te paper illustrates some successful portation Safety Administration (NHTSA 2016), in the implementations and describes recent developments USA somewhere between 94 and 96% of all car accidents worldwide. are caused by human error. Instead of blaming the driver for making these errors, in many cases, road crashes are Self‑explaining roads: the underlying theory caused by design-induced errors (Dumbaugh et al. 2020). Background Tis indicates that the road design may have been so It is generally agreed that most trafc accidents are confusing, inconsistent and violating the expectancies related to human error (e.g., Treat et al. 1977; NHTSA of road users that errors are likely to occur even when 2016). Because educating road users and mass media road users actively try to prevent them. Making roads campaigns directed towards changing road users behav- “self-explaining” focuses on a road-user-adapted design ior only have limited efects (see Wakefeld et al. 2010), using road elements such as signs, markings, geometry, it is crucial that the road environment elicits adequate road surface, lighting, road surface, trafc and speed behavior and minimizes human errors simply by its management, to prevent errors from occurring. In addi- design. Driving a vehicle (especially among those who tion to preventing errors from occurring, another impor- are experienced drivers) involves hardly any conscious tant aspect of a safe infrastructure is to make roads more control and basically consists of several skill-based com- “forgiving” implying that if an error is made, its conse- ponents that are fully automatized (Wickens and Horrey quences are minimized. In other words, the design of 2009). It has been argued that behavior can be triggered the road should forgive the driver for making errors by automatically by features in the environment (Bargh reducing the severity of accidents (Nitsche et al. 2010). and Ferguson 2000), suggesting that drivers may display From a theoretical point of view, it is assumed that behavior that is inconsistent with their explicit goals. For selecting information from the environment is the result example, drivers coincidently following a familiar route of the interaction between intentions and the goals of the to get to another new destination may fnd themselves driver (current selection goals) and the physical proper- following the familiar route too far. Also, in a driving ties of the visual environment (saliency of the objects). simulator study, it was shown that after driving the same Many basic models of attentional control have described route 24 times over four days participants failed to notice selection as a result of this interaction between what that an important road sign had changed (Martens and are referred to as “bottom-up” and “top-down” pro- Fox 2007).

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