ABSTRACT:
In an elevated planning process, the aspect of safety requires the use of design based on
scientific principles not only in technical but also in architectural and aesthetical terms. Without
it, planners will continue to focus their attention on the indescribable philosophy of aesthetics,
rather than its influences on users’ and thereby on traffic safety.
The main questions raised by this thesis were whether aesthetically rewarding traffic
environments are beneficial for traffic safety, and if they are, what will such traffic
environments look like. Accordingly, the general aims were 1) to test the possibility of
measuring traffic safety in relation to aesthetics 2) to describe road aesthetics in understandable
terms and 3) to elucidate whether drivers benefit from aesthetically pleasant road environments.
Due to the interdisciplinary character of the research, the investigation was conducted within
three main parts: aesthetics, environmental psychology and traffic safety. The thesis
investigated driving behaviour in relation to aesthetics in 10 beautiful and 10 ugly traffic
environments. The selection of the beautiful and ugly traffic environments was based on the
assumption that aesthetics, in terms of spatial relationships, can be expressed not only in terms
of pleasantness but also by means of emotions, arousal and cardiovascular activity. To link such
effects to the traffic safety, the field of environmental psychology was considered. A new model
of driving behaviour in relation to aesthetics was developed, based on Lewin’s (1951) equation,
B = f (P,E), that is behaviour (B) is a function of the person (P), the environment (E) and the
interaction between them, and by employing Küllers’ (1991) model of the basic emotional
process. The employed model B = f (R(Road), U(Users), A(Task), P(Person)), states that driving behaviour
(B) is related to the physical environment (R), other road users (U), the driving task (A), the
individual factors and own abilities (P); and to the interaction among them. In this way, driving
behaviour was investigated in relation to aesthetics both directly and through the driver’s basic
emotional process.
Taken together, the results confirmed that driving behaviour is influenced by aesthetics.
Aesthetically rewarding traffic environments seem to be beneficial for traffic safety. It is likely
that drivers display lower speed in beautiful rather then ugly traffic environments, not
spontaneously and directly as an effect of aesthetics, but after a sequence of driving and stop
over.
The author wishes to emphasise that what this thesis primarily introduces is not the evidence
that beautiful traffic environments are safer than ugly ones, but a step by step procedure which
opens up a method of describing beauty and relating it to drivers and traffic safety.
