PONE-D-21-35527A Comparative Driving Safety Study of Mountainous Expressway Individual Tunnel and Tunnel Group Based on Eye Gaze BehaviorPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: It is an interesting article. The authors conducted an extraordinary amount of field tests to study the eye gaze characteristics along a single tunnel and tunnel group. Please take the following recommendations into consideration:

1. It is better to specify the content of “suitable design”, just a brief presentation., which could be provide an information about the relationship between eye gaze characteristic and “which part of the design”.

2. Introduction line 44-48 on page 2 “The cumulative visual superposition effect is obvious, which causes an excessive visual load to drivers and can easily cause traffic accidents due to uncontrolled operation.” Is there any study supporting this claim?

3. The author often discusses about the difference of the gaze transition probability between individual tunnel and tunnel group but it is better to test the difference statistically (statistically significant or not).

4. It is good to mention the power of the Markov model used.

5. In the discussion part, please discuss published studies that show similar or dissimilar trends should be discussed.

6. Please add possible ideas for further research in the future, to line 446-448 on page 20. Elaborate, not only mention the curve section.

Reviewer #2: Generally, this is a qualified paper focused on the drivers' eye gaze behavior in tunnels of mountainous expressways. The research was conducted by a number of on-site tests that collected a lot of solid data. The research contents are proper, the methodology is reasonable and the conclusion is valid.

The following comments are used for evisions' reference.

1, Please explain why a 500m interval between two adjacent tunneal is used as threshold for defining tunnel group?

2, The definitions for short, medium, long and extra-long tunnels can be moved from "3.4 Experiment Design, L222~225" upward like "3.1 Single Tunnel and Tunnel Group Experiments", for an easier understanding.

3, L351, The two-step transfer, or The two-step transition? which word is better? like say, in the whole paper, are "transfer" and "transition" the same? could be replaceable? or used in the fixed terms each other? Please note clearly.

4, L437 "repetition" should be revised as "repeated".

5, Some comments are marked in the original paper.

Finally, English in the paper should be further polished， in order to be accurate and concise.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-35527 marked.pdf

A Comparative Driving Safety Study of Mountainous Expressway Individual Tunnel and Tunnel Group Based on Eye Gaze Behavior

PONE-D-21-35527R1

Dear Dr. Huang,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: I did think the authors have made a proper revision upon the reviewers' comments, and this paper is qualified to be published.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No