Tendency to commit traffic violations and presence of passengers in the car

The present study examined whether the tendency to commit traffic violations differed when drivers were with and without the presence of other persons in the car. One thousand and eight drivers were observed by the road side. The data registered by the observers included estimated age of the driver and the passengers, sex of the driver and number of passengers. Four dependent variables were registered for each driver, which are, wearing seatbelt, signaling, using hand-held cellular phone and keeping the distance from the vehicle in front. It has been found that for both males and females, old and young, a greater proportion of drivers who were alone committed traffic violations as compared to drivers who were not alone. These results are discussed in relation to social influences on drivers and allow insight into how the presence of passengers has an impact on driver behavior and traffic safety.     

The effect of visual and cognitive distraction on driver’s anticipation in a simulated car following scenario

Distraction is a common cause of accidents (e.g. NHTSA, 2009), and different distraction conditions influence the driving behaviour in a specific way. Despite a lot of research in this area, most studies concentrate on perception errors as a result of visual distraction. The effects of different distraction conditions on higher cognitive processes are still unclear. The fact that accidents happen even if the drivers perceive all relevant information implies that cognitive factors contribute to accidents, too. For this reason, this study was conducted to investigate how different distraction conditions influence the anticipation of events in a car–following scenario. Anticipation is required to know what will happen next, and to react adequately to the situation. In a driving simulator, scenarios with different manoeuvres of a preceding car were created to generate various anticipations and therefore a different adaptation of the driving behaviour. Additionally, a cognitive and a visual secondary task were introduced. The question was in which way either a cognitive or visual distraction influences the generation of anticipations and the construction of an appropriate situation model.The results indicate that in the phase when the preceding car showed braking manoeuvres, drivers prolonged their safety distance only when being visually distracted which is probably done to compensate for this visual distraction. This compensation ensued to some extent in the second phase where the preceding cars drove with a constant speed. Additionally, drivers who were visually distracted went somewhat slower when the car in front had braked in phase one. Thus, the drivers seemed to anticipate that the car might brake again and adapted their speed accordingly. This was not found in drivers with cognitive distraction. Thus, cognitive distraction seems to disturb this anticipation.Finally, at an intersection, drivers with visual distraction had a smaller TTC and a higher velocity when the car in front made an unexpected turn. Thus, the impairment of perception due to the visual distraction leads to a slower reaction as compared to a cognitive distraction. Overall, cognitive distraction influences the anticipation of possible future actions of other car drivers negatively while visual distraction deteriorates perception and thus the reaction to critical, sudden events. Thus, different intervention strategies are required to prevent these kinds of accidents.     

Racial bias in driver yielding behavior at crosswalks

Psychological and social identity-related factors have been shown to influence drivers’ behaviors toward pedestrians, but no previous studies have examined the potential for drivers’ racial bias to impact yielding behavior with pedestrians. If drivers’ yielding behavior results in differential behavior toward Black and White pedestrians, this may lead to disparate pedestrian crossing experiences based on race and potentially contribute to disproportionate safety outcomes for minorities. We tested the hypothesis that drivers’ yielding behavior is influenced by pedestrians’ race in a controlled field experiment at an unsignalized midblock marked crosswalk in downtown Portland, Oregon. Six trained male research team participants (3 White, 3 Black) simulated an individual pedestrian crossing, while trained observers cataloged the number of cars that passed and the time until a driver yielded. Results (88 pedestrian trials, 173 driver-subjects) revealed that Black pedestrians were passed by twice as many cars and experienced wait times that were 32% longer than White pedestrians. Results support the hypothesis that minority pedestrians experience discriminatory treatment by drivers at crosswalks.     

Territorial Defense in Parking Lots: Retaliation Against Waiting Drivers

Three studies showed that drivers leaving a public parking space are territorial even when such behavior is contrary to their goal of leaving. In Study 1 (observations of 200 departing cars), intruded-upon drivers took longer to leave than nonintruded-upon drivers. In Study 2, an experiment involving 240 drivers in which level of intrusion and status of intruder were manipulated, drivers took longer to leave when another car was present and when the intruder honked. Males left significantly sooner when intruded upon by a higher rather than lower status car, whereas females' departure times did not differ as a function of the status of the car. There was evidence that distraction might explain some of this effect. In Study 3, individuals who had parked at a mall were asked about how they would react to intruders. Compared to what they believed other people would do, respondents said they would leave faster if the car were just waiting for them to leave but they would take longer to leave if the driver in the car honked at them.     

Traffic-entry behavior and crash risk for older drivers with impairment of selective attention

Current research suggests that older drivers with declines in selective attention would make more unsafe traffic-entry judgments than would older drivers with normal attention. This hypothesis was tested using an instrumented vehicle and a LIDAR speed and range detector. Participants were 20 older drivers: 10 (M=72.0 yr.) had impairments of selective attention, measured with the Visual Attention Analyzer, Model 3000, and 10 were nonimpaired (M=71.2 yr.). Drivers pressed a button to indicate the last possible moment they could safely cross a road in front of an oncoming vehicle. The speed and distance of the oncoming vehicles were measured and time-to-contact was calculated. Each driver's time-to-cross the roadway was independently measured. Attention-impaired drivers showed shorter time-to-contact values (5.60 sec. versus 6.86 sec.), took longer to cross the roadway (5.41 sec. versus 4.84 sec.), and had shorter safety cushions (the difference between time-to-contact and time-to-cross the roadway). Monte Carlo simulation showed that these performance differences increased the crash risk of the impaired group by up to 17.9 times that of the nonimpaired group.     

Developing traffic safety interventions from conceptions of risks and accidents

By means of investigating the mental background to young male drivers’ risky traffic behaviour, this explorative qualitative study outlines a framework for the construction of interventions that could mitigate risk-taking among young male drivers. Seven males, 20–23 years of age, demonstrating excessive speeding behaviour when driving, were interviewed in-depth. Five themes, “Self-image as a good driver brings self-esteem”, “Commanding high speed – a pleasurable sensation”, “High awareness of risks, but notions of serious outcomes are not salient”, “Imagined accident scenarios evoke outcome conceptions” and “Perceived cause of accident influences anticipated affective reactions”, had central positions in their conceptions about risk-taking and accidents. The results were analysed in relation to previous literature on the concepts of Anticipated Regret and Imagining as antecedents to attitude and behaviour change, and it was concluded that interventions based on imagining the emotional aftermath of being the perpetrator of a serious accident should be developed and tested.     

Perceptual training to increase drivers’ ability to spot motorcycles at T-junctions

Motorcyclists too often collide with other road users who pull out of side roads in front of them. These other road users typically report making all the necessary visual checks, despite failing to see the approaching motorcycle. These Look But Fail To See errors appear to be attenuated in road users who themselves have motorcycling experience, suggesting that motorcycle exposure may lower thresholds for spotting these vulnerable road users through natural perceptual learning. This raises the possibility that perceptual training could improve car drivers’ abilities to spot motorcycles. Two experiments are reported. The first experiment demonstrated that a T-junction task, requiring participants to detect an approaching vehicle in briefly displayed images, was sensitive to participants’ motorcycle experience, with dual drivers (who both ride motorcycles and drive cars) performing better than average car drivers. Following this, a second experiment split the car drivers into 2 groups. One group undertook a Pelmanism task requiring participants to match pairs of motorcycles, while the control group had to match pairs of fruit. When the two groups were re-tested on the T-junction task, the group who had undergone perceptual training for motorcycles via the Pelmanism task, were better able to identify approaching motorcycles, but not approaching cars. The results suggest that gamification of perceptual training for motorcycle detection provides a novel opportunity to improve driver safety.     

Influence of speed-related auditory feedback on braking in a 3D-driving simulator

Although discrete auditory stimuli have been found useful for emergency braking, the role of continuous speed-related auditory feedback has not been investigated yet. This point may though be of importance in electric vehicles in which acoustic cues are drastically changed. The present study addressed this question through two experiments. In experiment 1, 12 usual drivers were exposed to naturalistic auditory feedback mimicking those issued from electric cars, while facing dynamic visual scenes in a 3D driving simulator. After being passively travelled up to a sustained constant speed, subjects had to stop their car in front of a traffic light that unexpectedly turned to red. Modifications of the speed-related auditory feedback did not impact braking initiation and regulation. In experiment 2, synthesized auditory feedback based on the Shepard-Risset glissando was provided to a new sample of 15 usual drivers in the same task. Pitch variations of this acoustic stimulus, although not scaled to an absolute speed, were manipulated as a function of visual speed changes. Changing the mapping between pitch variations of the synthesized auditory feedback and visual speed changes induced adjustments on braking which depended on acceleration/deceleration feedback. These findings stressed the importance of the acoustic content and its dynamics for car speed control.     

Driver responses to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events: The effects of motorcycling experience and novice versus experienced drivers

In many countries, motorcyclists are over-represented in traffic collision fatalities and injuries compared to vehicle registrations. Why drivers may violate the right-of-way of motorcyclists traveling as lead vehicles in front of drivers is empirically examined in two studies that were conducted with a moderate-fidelity driving simulator. The purpose of the first study was to determine if drivers, who also held a motorcycle license (N = 16), drove cars differently than regular drivers (N = 16) around motorcycles. The two groups did not differ on responses to motorcycling braking events, which was consistent with previous research on car following. The second study compared the driving performance of sixteen novice teenage drivers (M = 16.2 years of age) to 15 experienced drivers (M = 32.9) over the span of six monthly simulator sessions. Novice drivers’ perception response times (PRT) to the braking events were significantly longer than those of the experienced drivers. PRTs to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events decreased over sessions. For all participants, PRTs to the motorcycle events were longer than to the car events. The implications of these results for motorcyclists and drivers with different levels of experience are discussed.     

Examining the effect of visual treatments on truck drivers’ time-to-arrival judgments of motorcycles at T-intersections

An automobile–motorcycle crash most commonly results when an automobile pulls out of a side road into the path of an oncoming motorcycle and violates the motorcyclist’s right-of-way. One of the reasons for this could be that motorists misjudged the motorcycle arrival time. Motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to injury in crashes with truck due to substantial differences in vehicle mass, protection degree and speed. We investigated truck drivers’ judgments of motorcycle time-to-arrival (TTA) across a number of visual treatments. Participants watched a series of video clips captured at a T-intersection, and they were instructed to respond by clicking the computer mouse at the time they estimated the front wheels of an oncoming vehicle (motorcycle or car) to reach the T-intersection. The results showed that, at long distance between the target motorcycle and the viewer, the motorcycle with daytime running headlights (DRH) was estimated to arrive sooner than the motorcycle whose motorcyclist wore a black helmet with a reflective sticker. However, the opposite is true at a short distance. We also found that a motorcyclist wearing a white helmet and riding a motorcycle with DRH, as well as a motorcyclist wearing a white helmet and white outfit, would improve truck drivers’ judgment with respect to motorcycle TTA. Consequently, truck drivers would be less likely to pull out into a small gap in front of a motorcycle, resulting in a higher safety margin for the motorcycle.     

从进化心理学视角看两性冒险行为

进化心理学研究发现, 男性比女性更冒险, 男性冒险行为有社会助长和性别助长效应, 求偶动机与异性高魅力均可助长男性冒险行为。按照进化心理学观点, 冒险行为能表现男性作为潜在配偶的积极特征, 可增加其获得异性配偶的几率。择偶偏好研究也证实, 女性青睐敢于冒险的男性。作者认为, 女性冒险行为与求偶动机的关系主要受社会文化影响, 如中国女性在中意的异性面前更避险, 冒险行为领域中进化和文化的交互作用可能成为未来研究焦点。     

Patterns in perceived crash risk among male and female drivers with and without substantial cycling experience

Perceived risk of crashes is generally higher in female than in male cyclists. No study has assessed whether these gender differences only apply to riding bicycles. Using an online risk assessment task and survey, this study (a) tested the hypothesis that compared to men, women perceive higher risks, irrespective of traffic mode and (b) explored gender differences in the predictors of perceived risk. Data were analysed from 595 driver licence holders in Australia: 444 who cycled regularly, termed ‘cyclists’ from here on (31% women) and 151 regular drivers who did not (63% women), who are referred to as ‘drivers’. Cyclists in their role as cyclists and drivers in their role as drivers (traffic role) were instructed to imagine being in a specified traffic scenario and to assess crash likelihood. Each of 6 traffic scenarios was presented twice but differing in configuration: a violating car and a violating bicycle. A mixed ANOVA, with rated probability of a crash as the dependent variable, gender and traffic role as grouping factors, and configuration as the repeated measure, resulted in a main effect of configuration, showing that both drivers and cyclists perceived higher levels of risk of violating cars than of violating bicycles (η_p2 = 0.34). The interaction of traffic role and configuration showed this difference to be smaller for drivers than for cyclists (η_p2 = 0.18). This suggests that drivers are aware of the car’s high injury potential in crashes with cyclists. The main effect of gender showed that irrespective of traffic role, women perceived higher risk than men, which supported the hypothesis that gender differences are not limited to cycling (η_p2 = 0.03). The main effect of traffic role was not significant.For the predictors of perceived risk, ANOVA showed main effects for traffic role and gender, with small effect sizes (from η_p2 = 0.02 to η_p2 = 0.03). Cyclists were more confident, less inattentive and more in favour of stricter laws. Women felt less skilled and were more concerned about risks. None of the interactions between gender and traffic role were significant, which lent further support to the hypothesis that gender differences were a general rather than a cycling specific characteristic. Thus, perceived risk does not differ between women who regularly cycle and those who do not. These findings may inform interventions about the role of perceived risk in the uptake of cycling.     

The effects of dimmable road lighting: A comparison of measured and perceived visibility

By dimming road lighting, energy can be conserved without compromising traffic safety. This paper presents a study carried out on the effect of different lighting levels from road luminaires on drivers’ visual performance on a low traffic urban road. The small uniform target was used to evaluate the visibility performance of the drivers. The results obtained from subjective graded visibility were compared with contrast and the Adrian model. Results indicated a strong correlation between subjective graded visibility and contrast (R² = 0.94) and a positive correlation between subjective graded visibility and the Adrian model (R² = 0.88). Target’s location in relation to road luminaires had a considerable effect on its visibility. However, visibility is not a monotonic function of road lighting level. In the absence of glare from an oncoming car, 49% (3557 lm) of road lighting intensity provided better contrast and mean visibility than 100% (7252 lm) and 71% (5179 lm) of road lighting intensities. The glare from oncoming cars reduced visibility. However, no statistically significant effect of road lighting level on visibility under glare could be found.     

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF PREDICTIVE JUDGMENTS IN A TRAFFIC SITUATION

Observers seated in a car were required to predict where they would meet an oncoming car (Exp. I). Meeting point predictions were found to be systematically biased in the direction of the midpoint between cars. The error was proportional to the distance between midpoint and meeting point. A reduction in the errors occurred when the observers were allowed to check their predictions (Exp. II). Perfect agreement was found to hold between subjective midpoint judgments (Exp. III) and meeting point predictions, the former showing a small but obvious regression toward the meeting point.     

汽车前脸特征对年轻消费者喜好的影响

采用问卷和实验相结合的方式考察了汽车前脸的面部宽高比对年轻消费者喜好度的影响,同时探讨了支配性感知的中介作用与前脸表情的调节作用。结果发现：（1）面部宽高比可以显著预测人对汽车前脸的喜好度;（2）支配性感知在面部宽高比与喜好度之间起到完全中介作用;（3）前脸表情可以调节支配性感知对喜好度的影响,攻击型表情条件下的支配性感知显著影响喜好度,友好型表情条件下支配性感知的作用则不显著。     

Bright Cars and Speeding Tickets

Speeding tickets for a 22 month period in a suburban area were examined to determine the possible relationships among the percentage of speed over the speed limit, the age and color of the car, and the age and gender of the driver. The frequencies of speeding tickets by car color were also compared with the frequencies of cars on the road by colors. The percentage of speed over the limit was not related to the characteristics of the cars or the drivers. It was found, however, that red, grey, and brown cars were more likely to receive speeding tickets than cars of other colors. A previous conclusion that bright colored cars give the impression of speed, which results in a higher estimation of actual velocity, was not supported by the present study.     

Expertise increases the functional overlap between face and object perception

Recent studies indicate that expertise with objects can interfere with face processing. Although competition occurs between faces and objects of expertise, it remains unclear whether this reflects an expertise-specific bottleneck or the fact that objects of expertise grab attention and thereby consume more central resources. We investigated the perceptual costs of expertise by measuring visual thresholds for identifying targets embedded within RSVP sequences presented at varying temporal rates. Car experts and novices searched for face targets among face and car distractors, or watch targets among watch and car distractors. Remarkably, car experts were slower than novices at identifying faces among task-irrelevant cars, yet faster than novices at identifying watches among cars. This suggests that car expertise leads to greater functional overlap between cars and faces while reducing the functional overlap between cars and objects, a result incompatible with the notion of an encapsulated module for exclusive processing of faces.     

Effectiveness investigation of travel demand management measures in Beijing: Existing measures and a potential measure–tradable driving credit

Facing serious challenges of traffic congestion and air pollution, Beijing has implemented a series of traffic polices. In this paper, we first investigate the effectiveness of existing traffic measures in Beijing and analyse the underlying factors from the perspective of drivers, which provide insights for the traffic regulations in other cities worldwide. While the car ownership restriction has effectively limited the total number of vehicle in Beijing, the effect of the car use restriction only lasts for a short period. A survey on drivers’ opinions and attitudes towards the traffic situation and a potential measure, i.e., tradable driving credit (TDC), is conducted. Although traffic data shows that congestion improved and traffic was slightly congested in recent years in Beijing, most respondents believe congestion is still serious in Beijing. However, they think the impact of traffic congestion on their personal car use is relatively low, which could partly explain why so many travellers still depend on driving given the relative convenient transit facilities in Beijing. In addition, a large proportion of respondents treat personal cars as a representation of social status and think driving bring them pleasures, which indicates that it may be hard to further decrease the share of car trips in Beijing. According to their attitudes and social-economical characters, respondents’ willingness on their changes of travel behaviours under TDC is investigated. The results show that individuals’ social-economic characters such as income level, education and family size and the symbolic meaning of personal cars have significant influence on respondents’ willingness to switch to other transport modes.     

Conversing while driving: The importance of visual information for conversation modulation

Multiple studies have shown an increased accident risk due to telephoning while driving. On the other hand, driving with passengers leads to a decreased accident risk. One explanation is a conversation modulation by passengers in cars which leads to a different conversation pattern which is not so detrimental to driving as that when phoning. A driving simulator study was conducted in order to examine this conversation modulation more closely and to find out more about the factors involved in this modulation, especially about the role of visual information available to the passenger. In a within-subject design the conversational patterns of 33 drivers and passengers in different in-car settings (passenger as usual, passenger without front view or passenger without view of the driver) were compared to a hands-free cell phone and to a hands-free cell phone with additional visual information either about the driving situation or the driver. Participants were instructed to have a naturalistic small-talk with a friend. Results of the drivers’ speaking behavior showed a reduction of speaking while driving. Compared to a conversation partner on the cell phone, a passenger in the car varies his speaking rhythm by speaking more often but shorter. Further analyses showed that this effect is also found with a cell phone when providing the conversation partner additional visual information either about the driving situation or the driver. This latter finding supports the idea that conversation modulation is not triggered by being in the car but by the visual information about the driver’s state and the driving situation.     

A comparison of self-nominated and actual speeds in work zones

Despite significant research on drivers’ speeding behavior in work zones, little is known about how well drivers’ judgments of appropriate speeds match their actual speeds and what factors influence their judgments. This study aims to fill these two important gaps in the literature by comparing observed speeds in two work zones with drivers’ self-nominated speeds for the same work zones. In an online survey, drivers nominated speeds for the two work zones based on photographs in which the actual posted speed limits were not revealed. A simultaneous equation modeling approach was employed to examine the effects of driver characteristics on their self-nominated speeds. The results showed that survey participants nominated lower speeds (corresponding to higher compliance rates) than those which were observed. Higher speeds were nominated by males than females, young and middle aged drivers than older drivers, and drivers with truck driving experience than those who drive only cars. Larger differences between nominated and observed speeds were found among car drivers than truck drivers. These differences suggest that self-nominated speeds might not be valid indicators of the observed work zone speeds and therefore should not be used as an alternative to observed speed data.