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Driver's situation awareness (SA) is one of the key elements that affect driving decisionmaking and driving behavior. SA is influenced by many factors, and previous studies have focused only on individual factors. This study presents a comprehensive study to explore the path relationships and influence mechanism between SA and all influential factors, including road characteristics, driver characteristics and states, distracting elements, and cognitive ability. A structural equation model that relates SA to its influential factors is developed. A total of 324 valid questionnaires were collected to analyze and identify the relationships between the factors. The results show that the preceding influential factors have significant effects on SA, which is consistent with previous research. Based on path coefficients, positive effects were: cognitive abilities (0.500), driver state (0.360), age (0.277), driving experience (0.198), and gender (0.156). Negative effects were: distracting elements (−0.253) and road characteristics (−0.213). The results of this comprehensive study provide a valuable reference for the development of driver training programs and driving regulations.

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This paper presents a novel methodology for determining the overall highway safety level by integrating statistical analysis and analytic network process (ANP) with set pair analysis (SPA) which is applied in the evaluation of the overall highway safety for the first time. The methodology accounts for both quantitative and qualitative factors that contribute to traffic safety. The statistical analysis uses crash, alignment, intersection, and other data to determine the significant indices (variables) that affect safety. These indices are then combined with the planning (qualitative) indices to determine the weights of all indices based on expert opinions using ANP. Finally, the overall safety level of the highway is determined using SPA. The methodology is illustrated using data collected from two highways in China. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology is sound and reliable. The methodology is applicable to existing or new highways and can help to effectively evaluate the overall safety of a highway and develop long-term strategies for safety improvements.

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