Academic literature on the topic 'Automobile drivers Australia Psychology'

Public transit is widely recognized to reduce urban traffic congestion, as it encourages automobile travelers off the road. However, streetcars have been criticized for causing traffic congestion because large trams must operate in mixed traffic on narrow, congested streets. At the same time, streetcars reduce congestion by encouraging automobile drivers to use trams. So what is the net effect of streetcars on congestion? This paper presents a new method for assessing the net traffic congestion effects associated with streetcar operations in Melbourne, Australia, which has the largest streetcar network in the world. Impacts were determined with the use of a traffic network model to compare congestion with trams and without trams. The positive impacts of trams were estimated by using mode shift from tram to automobile when tram services were removed. Negative impacts were explored by considering streetcar traffic operations, the impact of curbside tram stops, and the effect of exclusive priority tram lanes on traffic flow. Findings show that the streetcar network in inner Melbourne results in a net congestion benefit to traffic; a 3.4% decrease in vehicle time traveled and total delay on the road network was established. The streetcar network also contributes to reducing the number of moderately congested links by 16%. Areas for future research are suggested, such as exploring the spatial distribution of the mode shift to automobile and the long-term effect of trams on traffic.

Objective We examine the relationships between contemporary progress in on‐road vehicle automation and its coherence with an envisioned “autopia” (automobile utopia) whereby the vehicle operation task is removed from all direct human control. Background The progressive automation of on‐road vehicles toward a completely driverless state is determined by the integration of technological advances into the private automobile market; improvements in transportation infrastructure and systems efficiencies; and the vision of future driving as a crash‐free enterprise. While there are many challenges to address with respect to automated vehicles concerning the remaining driver role, a considerable amount of technology is already present in vehicles and is advancing rapidly. Methods A multidisciplinary team of experts met to discuss the most critical challenges in the changing role of the driver, and associated safety issues, during the transitional phase of vehicle automation where human drivers continue to have an important but truncated role in monitoring and supervising vehicle operations. Results The group endorsed that vehicle automation is an important application of information technology, not only because of its impact on transportation efficiency, but also because road transport is a life critical system in which failures result in deaths and injuries. Five critical challenges were identified: driver independence and mobility, driver acceptance and trust, failure management, third-party testing, and political support. Conclusion Vehicle automation is not technical innovation alone, but is a social as much as a technological revolution consisting of both attendant costs and concomitant benefits.

Each year, millions of automobile crashes occur when drivers fail to notice and respond to conflicts with other vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Today, manufacturers race to deploy automation technologies to help eliminate these mishaps. To date, little effort has been made to educate drivers about how these systems work or how they affect driver behavior. Driver education for automated systems amounts to additional pages in an owner’s manual that is known to be a seldom-used glove box reference. In this article, we review the history of automation deployed in the airline cockpit decades ago. We describe how automation helped avoid many common crash scenarios but at the same time gave rise to new kinds of crashes. It was only following a concerted effort to educate pilots about the automation, about themselves, and about the concept of a human-automation team that we reached the near-zero crash rate we enjoy today. Drawing parallels between the automation systems, the available pilot and driver research, and operational experience in both airplanes and automobiles, we outline knowledge standards for drivers of partially automated cars and argue that the safe operation of these vehicles will be enhanced by drivers’ incorporation of this knowledge in their everyday travels.

Objective The effects of seat height and anthropometric dimensions on drivers’ preferred postures were investigated using a multiadjustable vehicle mock-up with a large number of adjustments and extended ranges. Background Many studies have been conducted on preferred driving posture under different test conditions showing mixed and even contradictory findings. No studies thus far have considered the clutch and compared Chinese and European drivers. Method Four seat height conditions were tested: free and three imposed heights (250, 300, and 350 mm). Sixty-one subjects (40 French-born and 21 Chinese-born) participated in the experiment, covering a large range of stature and sitting height–to–stature ratio. The RAMSIS kinematic model was used to reconstruct postures, and main intersegmental angles were extracted for characterizing posture. Results Under the free seat height condition, no significant differences in preferred intersegmental angles were observed between different participant groups. Seat height mainly affected trunk–thigh angle, whereas it had almost no effect on trunk orientation and other intersegmental angles. Chinese participants sat more forward in the seat, leading to a more opened trunk–thigh angle and a more reclined trunk. Conclusions Results suggest that intersegmental angles of preferred posture are not dependent on anthropometric dimensions, although shorter drivers prefer a slightly less reclined trunk. Self-selected driving posture results from a compromise between maintaining the intersegmental angles in one’s preferred range and a preferred trunk orientation in space. Applications The findings contribute to a better understanding of preferred driving postures and would be helpful for improving vehicle interior design.

Age labels may lead to the seeking of age-stereotypic information from target individuals. Using Carver and de la Garza's [1] information-seeking procedure (which asked respondents to judge the relative importance of various kinds of information they would glean from drivers involved in an automobile accident for assigning accident responsibility), but extending it to a wider life span (16 to 91 years of age) and to both genders, we generalized earlier findings to a similar undergraduate sample ( n = 437) in another country. Also demonstrated for the first time is the fact that ageist information-seeking across the life span was independent of the driver's gender, the participant's age, and the participant's gender. Specifically, participants wanted to know from younger drivers about their driving conduct (whether they had been drunk and speeding), and from older drivers about their capacity for driving (mental competence, vision, and health). The seeking of environmental information (car safety and road conditions) did not vary with the age of driver in any systematic way.

With the number of older drivers projected to increase by up to 70% over the next 20 years, preventing injury resulting from crashes involving older drivers is a significant concern for both policy-makers and clinicians. While the total number of fatal crashes per annum has steadily decreased since 2005 in Australia, the rate of fatalities has demonstrated an upward trend since 2010 in drivers aged 65 years and above (8.5 per 100,000), such that it is now on par with the fatality rate in drivers aged 17–25 years (8.0 per 100,000) (Austroads, 2015). Similar statistics are reported for the United States (NHTSA, 2012), implying there is a need for better identification of those older drivers who are unsafe and implementation of strategies that can enhance mobility while maximizing road safety.

Young drivers are over represented in traffic crashes throughout the world and despite considerable efforts to date, there is still considerable work to be undertaken to develop interventions that will aid in the reduction of this road trauma. Historically, road safety research has been more focused on evaluative research rather than the application of theory and this has effects on the success of interventions. This research used a well supported social psychological theory (Theory of Planned Behavior [TPB]) to investigate the relationship between attitudes and behavior in young drivers with a view to determining if there was an opportunity to move towards acceptable and appropriate interventions to reduce young drivers' involvement in traffic crashes.

This pragmatic study consists of four cross-sectional and two inter-linked longitudinal studies designed to review two classroom-based interventions aimed at modifying driving related attitudes and self-reported driving behaviour. Subjects, (N=451), were divided into three groups. Subjects in Group 1 (N=176), learned to drive, passed the driving test and completed a questionnaire schedule. Group 2 subjects, (N=123), in addition to the above, attended classroom-based predriver training course while learning to drive. The subjects in Group 3, (N= 152), after learning to drive, received a classroom-based post-driver training course \\ithin three months of passing the driving test. Questionnaires were issued as the subjects started driver training (Time I), on passing the driving test (Time 2), three months post-test (Time 3) and nine months post-test (Time 4). The ftrst study, Time I, tested the predictive ability of Ajzen's (1985, 1988) Theory of Planned Behaviour with regard to the intentions of new drivers to conform to the social and legal conventions of driving and was successful in explaining 34% of the variance. Study two, Time 2, tested for increased driving knowledge and additional driving motives between groups for effects of the pre-driving test intervention. No support for this type of intervention was found. Study three, Time 3, assessed the performance of a post-test intervention informed by the Health Belief Model (Rosenstock, 1966) and Protection Motivation Theory (Rogers, 1975). Using the Drivers Skil1s Inventory (Lajunen and Summala, 1995), results revealed that subjects in Group 3 perceived themselves to be signiftcantly less skilled and less safe. Study four, Time 4, was designed to test for effects of both interventions at nine-months post-test The results revealed that only those subjects in Group 3 had better behavioural intentions with regard to speeding behaviour. Overall no support was found for pre-driver training. However, limited support was found for post-driver training in influencing self-reported driving behaviour.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2008.
Title from PDF title page (viewed Sept. 21, 2009). Additional advisors: Michael Crowe, Cynthia Crowley, Virginia G. Wadley, David E. Vance. Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-34).

Many individuals rely on a navigational system every day to direct them to various destinations, and with the prevalence and danger of distracted driving accidents, it is imperative that we find an effective way to display navigational information to drivers with minimal visual distraction. The lane change test (LCT) was used to measure driving performance, as participants followed lane change cues presented on Road-Signs, a Head-Up Display (HUD), and a Head-Down Display (HDD). A peripheral detection task (PDT) was also implemented on half of the test tracks, with inward moving stimuli from either side of the road, to measure the participants’ ability to detect ecologically-valid stimuli while interacting with the assorted display locations. Driving performance, measured by the mean deviations from a normative path (MDev), was the worst with the HDD and similar with the Road-Signs and HUD. Analyses were completed to investigate a potential effect of age on the ability to interact with the display locations. Younger participants (20-24 years) performed the best with the HUD; while Older participants (26-31 years) performed the best with the Road-Signs. These differences are potentially attributed to the evolution of GPS technologies over the last decade. No significant differences were found in peripheral detection response time or accuracy between the display types or the age groups. As road signs cannot offer specific navigational instructions for all drivers in real-time, HUDs may be a good alternative to the in-vehicle HDD present in modern vehicles, but any in-vehicle interface implementation should be customizable and optional.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2003.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The problem of how the mind relates to the brain stands as one of the greatest challenges today. The materialistic worldview and pragmatic approach to social problems are both being transformed by discoveries of how human experience and culture arise in cerebral activity. Even so, this effort, spearheaded by neuroscience, has seen the important and contentious issue of driver behaviour somehow been left behind. From an extensive literature study, it can be concluded that gross disregard of the neural underpinnings of such behaviour tied to a behaviouristic approach is endemic to the field. Numerous qualitative psychological models (each associated with debates about their validity) and Artificial Intelligence models, which effectively only imitate robots 'impaired' to display some humanlike characteristics, were come across. Although neural networks are derived from current knowledge of computation within the brain and deployed in industry, human driver behaviour modelling is not benefiting from this revolution in humanlike information processing. To date, very little has been done to determine what makes road users speed, drive while drunk, overtake, or yield at crossroads. As the central nervous system is the human measuring device in and of the world and thus key affector of human behaviour, it is ofutrnost importance to invest resources in 'inoculating' the field of driver behaviour modelling onto a robust basis provided by neuroscience. Being a human driver incorporates a broad complement of interrelated brain systems to perform driving tasks (psychological functions) at hand, such as lane keeping, speed choice, risk perception, and obstacle avoidance. The proper level of analysis of such a psychological function is the level at which that function is represented in the brain. Providing a theoretical model of human behaviour, based on biological facts of the brain as a whole, is surely a challenge for decades to come, but the field of driver behaviour should be part of such an effort. Collaboration is needed among investigators from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, computer science, and engineering to further driver behaviour modelling. It is uncommon that professionals from these fields have a thorough understanding of the other fields involved, but the author, not pretending to be an expert, argues that such a union of fields will be of significant value not only to transportation, but all behavioural sciences. The wealth of to-date knowledge amassed in neuroscience lies ready to be tapped by researchers interested in explaining human driver behaviour. To this end, the use of modem brain-imaging techniques will be invaluable in pinning down the neural correlates of particular driving subtasks, bearing in mind the extent of structural impacts on the brain of each individual, brought about by a lifetime of interaction with the environment. Thus, based on the findings of this literature study, the author proposes that supplementary work be conducted by a multi-disciplinary team to roll-out an experiment to study the nature of environmental stimuli as instigators of aggression and road rage, by drawing on knowledge about brain imaging and (amygdala) activation.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die vraagstuk hoe die verstand [denke] met die brein in verband staan, is een van die grootste uitdagings tans. Die materialistiese wêreldbeskouing sowel as die pragmatiese benadering van maatskaplike probleme word verander deur ontdekkings aangaande die wyse waarop menslike ervaring en kultuur hul in serebrale aktiwiteit voordoen. Desondanks is in hierdie poging, met die neurowetenskap aan die spits, die belangrike en omstrede kwessie van bestuurdersgedrag om een of ander rede agterweë gelaat. Uit 'n uitgebreide literatuurstudie kan afgelei word dat grootskaalse verontagsaming van die neurale basis van sodanige gedrag gekoppel aan 'n behavioristiese benadering endemies is aan die gebied. Talle kwalitatiewe sielkundige modelle en kunsmatige intelligensiemodelle is teëgekom, elk gepaard met debatte oor die geldigheid daarvan. Hoewel neurale netwerkmodelle gebaseer word op huidige kennis van verwerking binne die brein en ontplooi word in die industrie, trek menslike bestuurdersgedragmodellering nie voordeel uit hierdie revolusie in neurale inligtingsverwerking nie. Tot op hede is baie min gedoen om vas te stel waarom padgebruikers jaag, dronkbestuur, verbysteek of by kruispaaie toegee. Aangesien die sentrale senuweestelsel die menslike meettoestel in en van die wêreld is en dus die sleutelbeïnvloeder van menslike gedrag is, is dit van die uiterste belang om middele te investeer in die fundering van die gebied van bestuurdersgedragmodellering op 'n stewige basis daargestel deur die neurowetenskappe. Om'n menslike bestuurder te wees behels 'n omvattende komplement van verbandhoudende breinstelsels om bestuurstake (sielkundige funksies) te verrig, soos spoedkeuse, risikowaarneming en die vermyding van obstruksies. Die gepaste ontledingsvlak van so 'n sielkundige funksie is die vlak waarop daardie funksie in die brein verteenwoordig word. Die daarstelling van 'n teoretiese model van menslike gedrag, gebaseer op biologiese feite van die brein in die geheel, is gewis nog vir komende dekades 'n uitdaging, maar die gebied van bestuurdersgedrag moet deel uitmaak van so 'n pogmg. Samewerking is nodig tussen navorsers uit die neurowetenskappe, sielkunde, wiskunde, rekenaarwetenskap en ingenieurswese om bestuurdersgedragmodellering te bevorder. Dit is ongewoon dat vakkundiges uit hierdie velde 'n deeglike begrip het van die ander gebiede wat betrokke is, maar die outeur, sonder om voor te gee dat hy 'n deskundige is, betoog dat so 'n samesnoering van vakgebiede van betekenisvolle waarde sal wees, nie net vir die vervoerwese nie, maar ook vir al die gedragwetenskappe. Die omvang van die jongste kennis wat in die neurowetenskappe vergaar is, lê gereed om deur navorsers benut te word wat belang stel in die verklaring van menslike bestuurdersgedrag. Met dié doel sal die gebruik van moderne breinskanderingstegnieke van onskatbare waarde wees om die neurale korrelate van bepaalde bestuursubtake vas te pen, gedagtig aan die omvang van strukturele impakte op die brein van elke indiwidu teweeggebring deur 'n leeftyd van interaksie met die omgewing. Daarom, gebaseer op die bevindinge van hierdie literatuurstudie, stel die outeur voor dat addisionele werk gedoen word deur 'n multi-dissiplinêre span ten einde 'n eksperiment uit te voer, waarin die aard van stimuli uit die omgewing, wat lei tot padwoede, bestudeer kan word, met inagneming van die beskikbare kennis oor breinskandering en (amygdala) -aktiveringpatrone.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 310-316). Also available online via the Georgia Institute of Technology, website (http://etd.gatech.edu/).