Road safety communication effectiveness: the roles of emotion and information in motorists’ ability to detect vulnerable road users

This study aimed to investigate the impact of the emotional and informational components of road safety communication on the motorists’ ability to detect cyclists in an urban environment. Different communication supports (audiovisual, auditory, visual) were used to present road safety messages to elicit different intensities of a same pattern of negative emotions before performing driving on a car driving simulator. Subjective results (intensities collected with a visual analog scale) showed that all the communication supports elicited the same set of emotions where sadness was salient. However, no evidence was found concerning a congruent physiological pattern (cardiac and pupillary response) either during exposure to communication supports or during a subsequent driving task. Better cyclist detections were observed after exposure to the safety messages, regardless of the communication support used. This result was confirmed by a better attention management for all participants, as shown by the analysis of the number of saccades per minute, the fixation durations and the speed of head movements and a safer speed management in areas where cyclists were present. The type of communication support is less important than the message itself to deliver some negative emotions. The combination of low-intensity negative emotions with safety messages appears to be an efficient strategy for a successful road safety communication when the aim is to improve motorists’ ability to detect cyclists. Perspectives in terms of on-board systems and guidelines for designing safety campaigns were also discusses, as well as limitations of this study.