Anastasia Gkouskou, “Investigation of the impact of roadside advertising to driver behaviour and safety in cities with the use of driving simulator”, Diploma Thesis, NTUA, School of Civil Engineering, Athens, July 2015.

This Diploma Thesis aims to investigate the impact of roadside advertising on driver behavior and safety in urban areas. In order to achieve this objective an experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all participants drove in different driving scenarios. Regression statistical models were developed to investigate the impact of roadside advertising on the mean speed and the lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline (lognormal) and on the mean reaction time (linear). The models’ application demonstrated that roadside advertising leads to small increase of the mean reaction time and the mean lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline. At the same time, it leads to small decrease of the mean speed, perhaps due to overloaded driving environment. Finally, roadside advertising appears to have no effect on the headway distance and the probability of causing an accident.