Abstract

The study was carried out as part of the smart level crossing project within the Innovation and Research Department of SNCF. Since 2017, the smart level crossing project developed a solution to transform the level crossing into a connected and intelligent intersection capable of sending messages about its status (open, closed, in works or out of service) and its characteristics (limitation of speed, high, weight, width and profile) to connected road vehicles.

In France, just over 15,000 level crossings are spread over the 25,000 km of lines of the national rail network operated. On the SNCF network, there are on average a hundred collisions per year and between 25 and 45 people killed per year.

The number of accidents at level crossings has a downward trend over the past 20 years. But if we analyze the last 10 years, the number of accidents at level crossings stagnated.

With the arrival of new driver assistance technologies in vehicles (ITS system), SNCF is convinced that these road safety technologies can reduce the number of accidents at level crossings. 

SNCF decided to carry out the experiment based on a course on a driving simulator. The use of a simulator was justified by the difficulty of carrying out this experiment on the open road in the context of real situations (regulatory, technical, safety, financial constraints, etc.).

As part of this research, we have developed scenarios related to known accidentology to assess the contribution of these technologies to behavior at level crossings. 

The route includes 12 situations, 11 of which with an ITS  message, 5 situations concern level crossing crossings. All ITS situations are generated in the same way, namely with a beep and a text message and a pictogram on the tablet.

A panel of 31 subjects was recruited to participate in this study.

Through this study, the objectives are to assess:

- Understanding level crossings messages,

- the impact of level crossings messages on driver behavior

- the cognitive load of the subjects generated by the level crossings messages,

- the acceptability and understanding of ITS devices in the road context, including level crossings.

This study aims to assess the impact of these messages displayed on the vehicle dashboard on the road driver and the associated cognitive load.