An empirical investigation of driver’s eye-catching effect in the entrance zone of freeway tunnels: A naturalistic driving experiment

•Different visual environments at freeway tunnel entrance zones have varying effects on driver's visual attention, cognitive workload, and subjective mental workload.•The billboard condition attracts the highest level of visual attention from drivers, while the tip slogan condition results in the highest cognitive workload.•Evaluation using the NASA-TLX scale indicates that the tip slogan condition has the greatest impact on drivers' subjective mental workload.