A new method for evaluating driver behavior and interventions for passive railway level crossings with pneumatic tubes

The recent development of new technologies has attracted the interest of the rail industry to increase driver awareness at railway-level crossings. Such interventions have been predominantly tested in driving simulators, but driver behavior at level crossings is still poorly understood due to the limited number, focus, and period of time of studies conducted. This highlights the lack of manageable methods for studying driver behavior on a long-term basis in naturalistic conditions, particularly for passive-level crossings. The authors propose a new, practical, and affordable application of pneumatic tubes to evaluate over the long term the compliance of drivers at level crossings and their speed during the approach of level crossing with low road-traffic volume. The authors tested this methodology at two railway-level crossings in the Brisbane region and recorded more than 10,000 vehicle movements for each site over a 6-month data collection. The authors showed that this methodology detected differences in driver compliance at the two crossings that had different sighting characteristics. The authors also showed by sensitivity analysis that compliance estimates from this approach were within a +/- 6% range, which would be sufficient for detecting significant changes in driver behavior with new interventions for level crossings.