Search results for " Control"
showing 10 items of 7691 documents
When the social discourse on violation behaviors is challenged by the perception of everyday life experiences: Effects of non-accident experiences on…
2016
International audience; The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of the Non-Accident Experience (NAE) with regard to violations of traffic safety regulations. An NAE refers to the fact of not having been involved in an accident following the adoption of a behaviour socially recognised as promoting its occurrence. We hypothesise that this type of experiences has a strong effect on attitudes (valence and strength) and habits with regard to traffic offences such as speeding and drink-drive. An empirical study was conducted to test the relevance of this set of hypotheses. 543 French drivers participated to a survey designed to measure all these theoretical constructs. As expected, th…
Angry thoughts in Spanish drivers and their relationship with crash-related events. The mediation effect of aggressive and risky driving
2016
Abstract Several studies have related aggressive and risky driving behaviours to accidents. However, the cognitive processes associated with driving aggression have received very little attention in the scientific literature. With the aim of shedding light on this topic, the present research was carried out on a sample of 414 participants in order to validate the Driver’s Angry Thoughts Questionnaire (DATQ) with a sample of Spanish drivers and to test the hypothesis of the mediation effect of aggressive and risky driving on the relationship between drivers’ angry thoughts and crash-related events. The results showed a good fit with the five-factor model of the questionnaire (Judgmental and …
Wertheim’s hypothesis on ‘highway hypnosis’: empirical evidence from a study on motorway and conventional road driving
2003
This paper aims to study the phenomenon known as 'highway hypnosis' or 'driving without attention mode', which has been defined as a state showing sleepiness signs and attention slip resulting from driving a motor vehicle for a long period in a highly predictable environment with low event occurrence, this being the case with motorways and very familiar roads [Highway hypnosis: a theoretical analysis. In: Gale, A.G., Brown, I.D., Haslegrave, C.M., Moorhead, I., Taylor, S. (Eds.), Vision in Vehicles-III. Elsevier, North-Holland, pp. 467-472]. According to Wertheim's hypothesis on 'highway hypnosis', long-term driving on motorways and conventional roads, e.g. main roads, secondary roads--impl…
The impact of rear-view mirror distance and curvature on judgements relevant to road safety
2011
We report two experiments that investigate the impact of rear-view mirror distance and curvature on distance, spacing, and time-to-contact (TTC) judgements. The variation in mirror distance had a significant effect on TTC judgements, but only marginally influenced distance and spacing estimations. As mirror distance increased, TTC was overestimated, which is potentially dangerous. Control conditions with identical visual angles across different mirror distances revealed that effects were not solely caused by variation in visual angle. The impact of mirror curvature moderated the effect. While observers were unable to compensate for the mirror distance effect, they could do so for the distor…
Convex rear view mirrors compromise distance and time-to-contact judgements
2007
Convex rear view mirrors increasingly replace planar mirrors in automobiles. While increasing the field of view, convex mirrors are also taken to increase distance estimates and thereby reduce safety margins. However, this study failed to replicate systematic distance estimation errors in a real world setting. Whereas distance estimates were accurate on average, convex mirrors lead to significantly more variance in distance and spacing estimations. A second experiment explored the effect of mirrors on time-to-contact estimations, which had not been previously researched. Potential effects of display size were separated from effects caused by distortion in convex mirrors. Time-to-contact est…
Driving on the motorway: the effect of alternating speed on driver's activation level and mental effort
2002
When most of the driving tasks are performed automatically, a driver's level of alertness may decline, as has been pointed out in the study of the phenomenon called 'highway hypnosis'. One possible countermeasure is to periodically vary the speed (Wertheim 1978), but the authors have not found any studies that directly assess the effectiveness of this countermeasure. The objective of our study has been to provide empirical evidence regarding the effects of this strategy on the level of driver activation on a motorway route in real traffic. In the present study activation level as indexed by a relative measure based on slow EEG activity tended to be significantly higher when speed was modifi…
The Attentional Demand of Automobile Driving Revisited: Occlusion Distance as a Function of Task- Relevant Event Density in Realistic Driving Scenari…
2014
Objective: We studied the utility of occlusion distance as a function of task-relevant event density in realistic traffic scenarios with self-controlled speed. Background: The visual occlusion technique is an established method for assessing visual demands of driving. However, occlusion time is not a highly informative measure of environmental task-relevant event density in self-paced driving scenarios because it partials out the effects of changes in driving speed. Method: Self-determined occlusion times and distances of 97 drivers with varying backgrounds were analyzed in driving scenarios simulating real Finnish suburban and highway traffic environments with self-determined vehicle speed…
Driving under the influence of alcohol: frequency, reasons, perceived risk and punishment
2015
Background The aim of this study was to gain information useful to improve traffic safety, concerning the following aspects for DUI (Driving Under the Influence): frequency, reasons, perceived risk, drivers' knowledge of the related penalties, perceived likelihood of being punished, drivers’ perception of the harshness of punitive measures and drivers’ perception of the probability of behavioral change after punishment for DUI. Methods A sample of 1100 Spanish drivers, 678 men and 422 women aged from 14 to 65 years old, took part in a telephone survey using a questionnaire to gather sociodemographic and psychosocial information about drivers, as well as information on enforcement, clustered…
Further development of a commercial driving simulation for research in occupational medicine
2012
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to refine a commercial car driving simulation for occupational research. As the effects of ethanol on driving behavior are well established, we choose alcohol as a test compound to investigate the performance of subjects during simulation. Materials and Methods: We programmed a night driving scenario consisting of monotonous highway and a rural road on a Foerst F10-P driving simulator. Twenty healthy men, 19-30 years, participated in a pilot study. Subjects were screened for simulator sickness, followed by training on the simulator one hour in total. Experiments were performed in the morning on a separate day. Participants were randomized into eithe…
Driving habits and risk factors for traffic accidents among sleep apnea patients - a European multi-centre cohort study
2014
Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with increased motor vehicle accident risk, and improved detection of patients at risk is of importance. The present study addresses potential risk factors in the European Sleep Apnea Database and includes patients with suspected obstructive sleep apnea [n = 8476, age 51.5 (12.5) years, body mass index 31.0 (6.6) kg m(-2) , 82.4% driver's licence holders]. Driving distance (km year(-1) ), driver's licence type, sleep apnea severity, sleepiness and comorbidities were assessed. Previously validated risk factors for accident history: Epworth Sleepiness Scale ≥16; habitual sleep time ≤5 h; use of hypnotics; and driving ≥15 000 km year(-1) were analysed acro…