ESTABLISHMENT OF A UNIFORM ROUTE GUIDANCE SYSTEM IN UKRAINE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE WORLD’S BEST PRACTICES TO IMPROVE ROAD SAFETY

Route guidance tools have a significant impact on road safety on public roads, as they carry important information on route guidance: provide drivers with information on the location on a specified road, regularly confirm the planned direction of movement, timely inform road users about the change of specified route direction and indicate the distance to the final object. This is very important information for the driver and it is difficult to overestimate it in road safety. Timely informing of drivers on the route direction will allow them carrying out adjustments in advance and feel confident on the road. Ensuring the completeness of route guidance information prevents emergency braking of vehicles in the area of traffic junctions and violation of the maneuvering rules to make a turn / turnaround in the right direction, and such maneuvers lead to road accidents. The establishment of a uniform route guidance system will reduce the road accident level and the cost of transportation due to excessive mileage of vehicles in the case of wrong route and help the drivers freely and easily get to their destination. The main need for information is felt by the drivers of vehicles whose actions directly impact the road safety. This, in turn, determines the basic principles and requirements for the composition, placement and choice of information tools. During the trip, the drivers need the information that would allow them navigating freely on the roads when passing the selected route that will relieve the stress of drivers and reduce the probability of road accidents, as well as increase the capacity of roads. It helps the drivers to adjust the previously selected route taking into account the real traffic conditions during the trip thereby minimizing the time consumption. To navigate the roads during movement, the drivers need the information about streets, objects and directions. Such information is provided by information signs, with which the road network must be equipped in sufficient quantity. The information provision should differ depending on the settlements, public roads and traffic conditions. A comprehensive solution of the issue of quality information provision to the road users can be achieved only by establishing a uniform route guidance system for road users which will take into account the needs for information of different categories of road users.

Wood ants express uncertainty when engaging with magnetic cues for directional guidance

Wood ants were trained indoors to follow a route in a chosen magnetic direction from the centre of a small, circular arena to find a drop of sucrose at the edge. The arena, surrounded by a white cylindrical wall, was in the centre of a 3D coil system that generated an inclined Earth strength magnetic field in any horizontal direction. Between trials, the chosen magnetic training direction was rotated to a new orientation. Tests were given without food and with fresh or reversed paper on the floor of the arena. In a significant number of tests, ants left the centre facing the goal, or in the opposite direction, but they mostly failed to reach the goal. Tests given early in the day, before any training, show that ants remember the magnetic route direction overnight. On some training trials, the position of the sucrose was also indicated by a black stripe. Not uncommonly, ants first moved in the opposite direction to the stripe before switching to the correct direction. Travel away from the reward seems to express the ant's uncertainty about the correct path to take. Tests show that this uncertainty may stem from competing directional cues linked to the room, suggesting that ants are reluctant to rely on magnetic information alone. We conclude that ants can remember a route direction defined by an Earth-strength magnetic field and that they express any uncertainty about the correct direction by moving for a stretch in the opposite direction. In a second experiment, an upright and an inverted triangle were fixed 90° from each other to the inside of the cylinder. Sucrose was placed beneath one of the triangles, dependent on the direction of the magnetic field. Ants failed to master this task and to approach the magnetically cued triangle. Instead, they preferred to approach the upright triangle. The ants were again uncertain of the correct direction and expressed this uncertainty through paths that had segments directed towards both the inverted and the upright triangles.