Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) HSI Guidelines and Resources

Human Factors Guidelines for Road Systems, 2^nd Ed, provides human factors principles and guidelines for use by highway designers, traffic engineers, and other highway safety practitioners to support operational decisions and design of safe roadways. The guide provides actionable design principles, along with discussion and review of supporting research.

This report includes a few principles and guidelines that are specific to issues of attention and distraction, such as minimizing visual distraction.  For example: 

“Minimize attention-dividing Conditions: Place the lane drop  away from other distractions such as ramps or complicated signage.”  (p. 12-6)

“… designers are cautioned to avoid overloading the driver with extraneous information that might distract him or her from the primary task of maintaining safe control of the vehicle”  (p. 6-13)

This resource also contains a section on practical application of Human Factors techniques to analyze sight distance problems and other design efficiencies.  An example ,shown here, includes taking inventory of visual distractions at hazard locations through field data collection. 

Federal Motor Carrier Association (FMCA) HSI Guidelines and Resources

While the Federal Motor Carrier Association does not provide a comprehensive resource of HSI principles and guidelines, the association offers a number of research articles relevant to issues of attention, distraction, and fatigue. 

Barr, Yang, Hanowski, & Olsen. (2011). An assessment of driver drowsiness, distraction, and performance in a naturalistic setting.

U. S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. (2010). Distraction in Commercial Trucks and  Buses: Assessing Prevalence and Risk in Conjunction with Crashes and Near-Crashes.

Olson, Hanowski, Hickman, & Bocanegra. (2009), Driver distraction in commercial vehicle operations.