Impact of Road Beauty on Drivers Mind

Abstract

As Martti I. Jaatinen, a Finnish architect defined a good road in his book entitled “Tie suomalaisessa maisemassa” (The Road in the Finnish Landscape) in 1967, “A good road is a living, total work that arises from a vision, which demands impeccable professional skill in its designer, as well as the ability to understand and create aesthetic landscape totalities." The basic demands he presented are road economy, safety and beauty. How the line of the road; fits into the landscape depends on all the essentials, that is, on economy, safety and beauty. But we can see that road economy and safety are highly prioritized and road beauty is not much considered in Sri Lanka. This situation is questionable because road beauty has an impact on drivers mind. Because, travelling is a way to get from one place to another, but it can also be more than that. It can be a source of pleasure and a memorable experience. The joy of being "on the road" comes from the road and the road beauty. The major objective of this research is to identify that; “is there any impact on road beauty on drivers mind?”. In order to achieve this objective 50 people were selected randomly and both primary and secondary data have been used for this research. To collect primary data 50 people were questioned and interviewed. In addition, books, web sites, online magazines were taken as secondary data. Since the collected primary data was quantitative, data analysis has been done quantitatively. According to the findings of the research; there is an impact of road beauty on drivers’ mind and its now becoming more widely accepted that road beauty, road art plays an important role in driver’s or travelers’ mind. According to the sample, art attached to the road should be simplest art works placed beside a road and road arts can be used to improve the safety as well as economy. Because road arts can designed as providing essential knowledge to road users like which town they are passing and what services are available.