Driving on familiar roads? Development and validation of car drivers' road user experience scale.

• The road user experience is defined as the subjective perception of the road traffic environment that road users experience when participating in urban road traffic. • Car drivers' road user experience integrates the experience of static with perceptions of dynamic, and describes the overall road traffic environment experienced by car drivers. • Car Drivers' Road User Experience Scale comprises four factors: travel experience, road condition experience, road sign experience, and road network experience. • Car drivers' road user experience is closely related to the amount of tasks they experience while driving and traffic climate. • Investigation of such experience can avoid the limitations of the human–computer interaction model, and help to develop a virtuous cycle of driving experience improvement and road system optimization. Urban roads serve a wide variety of road users, and the content and level of urban road user experience is an important part of evaluating and improving the service quality of road traffic. The study aim was to increase understanding of the road user experience of car drivers by developing and validating the Car Drivers' Road User Experience Scale. Using web-based questionnaires, three studies were conducted with three independent samples of Chinese car drivers to develop and validate the measurement scale. The results showed that the scale comprises four factors: travel experience, road condition experience, road sign experience, and road network experience. This study explored the theory and characteristics of car drivers' road user experience and provided a new scientific measurement tool. This tool could provide new data to support strategies to improve driver road user experience and promote the development of the urban road traffic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]