In the movie “Speed,” a bus hot-wired by a terrorist would blow up if the vehicle’s speed dipped below 50 mph. In the driving simulator at the University’s Human Factors Research Laboratory, scientists aren’t so villainous. They just want their subjects to try to keep it at that speed.
Using computerized driving simulations, scientists at the School of Kinesiology-run laboratory in Mariucci Arena have found they can control drivers’ speeds by changing patterns in the design of roads.
By removing the engine from a 1990 Acura Integra and replacing it with a high-powered computer, lab technicians created a driving simulator that is not for the faint of heart. Rookies sometimes get dizzy and have even become sick. “We keep a trash can outside the driver’s door just in case,” said lab researcher Steve Scallen.
The researchers paint vertical stripes on the sides of tunnels, said lab director and kinesiology professor Peter Hancock. If the stripes are placed close together, drivers will sense they are going too fast; if the stripes are placed far apart, drivers have the illusion that they are driving too slowly.
But design is not limited to tunnels and stripes. Researchers are also examining the effects of placing trees at varied distances and painting checkerboard, horizontal and vertical lines on retaining walls and guard rails, said John Carmody, senior research fellow at the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
“As drivers are coming into town, you want them to slow down,” said Carmody, the principal investigator for the project. “By putting trees close to the road at certain spacings, we create an optical illusion that can cause people to slow down.”
The scientists are exploring any possible way to reduce drivers’ speeds by “placing divides down the middle of the road, pavement markings, using different colors, planting trees, narrowing the road or putting a curb on it,” Carmody said.
Hancock founded the laboratory in 1989 to research the safety and performance of complex technical systems. Other studies at the lab examine methods of reducing driver fatigue and ways to implement new technologies, Scallen said.
“Human factors is about applying knowledge in the real world,” Scallen said. “You don’t want to take a person out in the real world and do a fatigue study.”
The lab is preparing a project for the Minnesota Department of Transportation to be tested on state Highway 61 this fall. The lab will attempt to slow down traffic on the two-way, single-lane stretch of road that runs from Two Harbors, Minn., to the Canadian border.
The highway passes through the towns of Schroeder and Tofte, which are about 5 miles apart.
The renovation comes as a welcome surprise to 20-year Schroeder resident and town clerk Linda Morris. “It’s been years since they’ve done anything,” she said.
Schroeder Township Supervisor Sylvester Buckman, who has lived near the highway for more than 40 years, said although driving more than 40 mph through the town of 175 people is illegal, people do it all the time.
“Quite a few people have been picked up up here,” Buckman said. “They move, that’s for sure. You betcha.”