Journal of Transportation Research

Journal of Transportation Research

Modeling the effects of billboards on the behavior of drivers in the rural roads

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Gholamali Behzadi 1
Aram Jamshidi 2
1 Assistant Professor, Technical and Engineering, Shomal, Amol, Iran.
2 Ph.D., Student, Technical and Engineering, Shomal, Amol, Iran.
10.22034/tri.2026.579724.3447
Abstract
Driver performance is affected by a wide range of human factors, including fatigue, distraction, mood, etc. Among these factors, distraction is a serious and growing problem that is known as one of the important factors in road accidents. Factors that affect the driver's concentration level and cause poor driver performance can be divided into two categories: internal factors and external factors. Billboards are also external distraction events that disrupt driver performance while driving. In recent years, for various reasons, including the use of billboards as a source of income, the number of these billboards has increased significantly. However, with the increase in billboards, no changes have been observed in the management of distraction control. Also, in previous studies, various results have been reported on the effect of distraction on the speed, distance, and change of direction of drivers in the presence of various billboards. In this study, an attempt is made to examine the effect of billboards with simple and complex content on the behavior of drivers on rural roads using collected field data.In order to achieve the research objectives, data were collected in three different scenarios (no billboard, simple billboard, and complex billboard) and for three main variables (speed, headway, and lane change) using heli-shot video on the northern route of the southern ring road of Babol. The logistic regression model was used to determine the parameters affecting driver behavior on rural roads. The modeling results showed that driver distraction due to the complexity of the billboard content was significantly the main factor in reducing speed and lane change, as well as increasing headway, which mainly occurred in sections close to the billboard. This indicates that the effect of billboards on the variables is short-term and local and depends on the type of billboard content.
Keywords
billboards
complex and simple billboards
driving performance
spead . Headway
lane changing
Subjects
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