The rhythm of the road: Geometric design guides drivers’ attention through ecological scale matching principles

Drivers’ active gaze can promote eye contact and early mutual confirmation with pedestrians, strengthening pedestrian-first awareness, enhancing protections for vulnerable road users, and reducing traffic risk. To investigate how geometric design can be used to guide and enhance driver attention towards pedestrians in shared space, this study recruited 20 drivers and used Tobii Pro Glasses 3 (100 Hz) to record their eye-tracking data as they viewed 35-second videos of 15 designs. The study examined the Entrainment Effect of different designs on drivers’ rhythm of visual attention through Power Spectral Density analysis. Eye-tracking data across 15 design conditions were analyzed using non-parametric methods. The results revealed a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between the strength of the visual entrainment effect and the visual rhythm (temporal frequency) generated by the pavement; interaction effect was found between design’s line width and temporal frequency, and the pattern of this interaction was modulated by the scale of road width. Ultimately, the study revealed a deeper “ecological scale matching” principle (λ optimal ≈ Road-Width), wherein the optimal spatial period of geometric design matches the width of the road it occupies. This principle may be an important reason for determining the generation of the optimal attention-guiding frequency. This study provides a predictable design principle for road environments, such as shared space, from the perspective of cognitive and visual attention mechanisms. This principle posits that by optimizing the structure of the pavement in accordance with the ecological scale matching principle, effective guidance of a driver’s attention can be achieved.