Psychological Analysis of Degree of Safety in Traffic Environment Design

See this work in the Center for Transportation Research Library catalog: https://library.ctr.utexas.edu/Presto/catalogid=5773Recent on-site accident investigation studies have estimated that between 10 and 25 percent of automobile accidents involve distraction as a principal causative factor. This report presents the findings of a research project designed to study the relationship between visual dis tractors in the roadside environment, such as advertising signs, neon lights, and gaudy billboards, and traffic safety. This project has involved the definition, operationalization, and measurement of visual distractibility in the traffic environment, including an analysis of distractions attributable to private signs and lights in the Vicinity of public signs and signals and of distractions caused by an overload or improper placement of public signs.Texas Office of Traffic SafetyCenter for Transportation ResearchSee this work in the Center for Transportation Research Library catalog

A Review of Driver Gaze Estimation and Application in Gaze Behavior Understanding

Driver gaze plays an important role in different gaze-based applications such as driver attentiveness detection, visual distraction detection, gaze behavior understanding, and building driver assistance system. The main objective of this study is to perform a comprehensive summary of driver gaze fundamentals, methods to estimate driver gaze, and it's applications in real world driving scenarios. We first discuss the fundamentals related to driver gaze, involving head-mounted and remote setup based gaze estimation and the terminologies used for each of these data collection methods. Next, we list out the existing benchmark driver gaze datasets, highlighting the collection methodology and the equipment used for such data collection. This is followed by a discussion of the algorithms used for driver gaze estimation, which primarily involves traditional machine learning and deep learning based techniques. The estimated driver gaze is then used for understanding gaze behavior while maneuvering through intersections, on-ramps, off-ramps, lane changing, and determining the effect of roadside advertising structures. Finally, we have discussed the limitations in the existing literature, challenges, and the future scope in driver gaze estimation and gaze-based applications

Assessing the variation of driver distraction with experience

Driver distraction has been a major concern in highway safety. Driver distraction is related to crashes and crash rate varies with age. Driving experience obviously increases with age. The purpose of this study is to determine the relation between driver experience and distraction. The study measures the distraction levels of various drivers and assesses the variation in distraction based on experience and also gender.;Distraction was defined as looking away from the center of the roadway for more than 2 seconds. Factors like distraction duration, percent time spent looking at the center of roadway and number of glances away from the center were considered in the analysis. The distraction factors were measured using a faceLAB eye tracking system. A statistical analysis was carried to test the significance of the variation. No significant statistical difference was observed in the percent time spent at the center of roadway and the number of glances away from the center based on driver experience and gender. A statistically significant difference was observed in the number of glances made by each group of drivers. Experienced drivers made more glances away from the center compared to less experienced drivers and the number was higher for female drivers than male drivers.;The analysis leads to conclusion that though the distraction level does not vary by experience, more experienced drivers exhibit better scanning of the roadway environment. No difference was observed in the distraction between male and female drivers. However, female drivers exhibited better scanning patterns than male drivers in the absence of additional distracting factors

Attentional Control in Young Drivers: Does Training Help or Hinder Bottom-Up Processing in a Dynamic Driving Environment?

Anticipating hidden hazards on the road is a critical skill for safe driving, one that many young and novice drivers lack. Training programs are shown to improve hazard anticipation performance in young drivers, but whether these training effects persist in the presence of salient and potentially distracting stimuli remains relatively less explored. In this study, we examined whether the effectiveness of an existing driving training program, Risk Awareness Perception Training (RAPT), on increasing latent hazard anticipation on the road persisted with extraneous bottom-up stimuli in the road environment. Forty-one young drivers, aged 18-21, completed a series of driving scenarios with latent hazards, after completing RAPT or a placebo training, in a medium-fidelity driving simulator with their eyes tracked. The eye movement data showed that RAPT-trained drivers anticipated hazards correctly in more scenarios than Placebo-trained drivers, replicating previous works. Additionally, the results suggest that the effectiveness of RAPT persisted even in scenarios that involve dynamic onset of pedestrians presented simultaneously with the latent hazards. The results imply that RAPT can improve drivers’ latent hazard anticipation performance, protecting them from the adverse effect of attentional capture by stimulus movements that coexist with latent road hazards

Eye tracking use in researching driver distraction: A scientometric and qualitative literature review approach

Many factors affect road safety, but research constantly shows that drivers are the major cause of critical situations that could potentially lead to a traffic accident in road traffic. Visual information is a crucial part of input information into the driving process; therefore, distractions of overt visual attention can potentially have a large impact on driving safety. Modern eye tracking technology enables researchers to gain precise insight into the direction and movement of a driver’s gaze during various distractions. As this is an evolving and currently very relevant field of road safety research, the present paper sets out to analyse the current state of the research field and the most relevant publications that use eye tracking for research of distractions to a driver’s visual attention. With the use of scientometrics and a qualitative review of the 139 identified publications that fit the inclusion criteria, the results revealed a currently expanding research field. The narrow research field is interdisciplinary in its core, as evidenced by the dispersion of publication sources and research variables. The main research gaps identified were performing research in real conditions, including a wider array of distractions, a larger number of participants, and increasing interdisciplinarity of the field with more author cooperation outside of their primary co-authorship networks

Safety and Environmental Design Consideration in the Use of Commercial Electronic Variable-Message Signage

This study reviews existing reported research and experience regarding use of commercial electronic variable-message signs (CEVMS), and evaluates research findings and methods in terms of implications for highway safety and environmental design. Aspects of CEVMS design and use that are capable of adversely affecting highway safety and/or environmental quality are identified and discussed in terms of the adequacy of existing research and experience to permit formulation of quantified standards for safe and environmentally compatible use. This report notes, with illustrations, the principal forms of variable-message signage developed for official traffic control and informational use, and the major forms of variable-message signage utilizing electronic processes or remote control for display of commercial advertising and public service information in roadside sites. Studies of highway safety aspects of outdoor advertising which are based on analysis of accident data are evaluated and reasons for apparent conflicts of their findings are discussed. Studies of highway safety aspects of outdoor advertising generally and CEVMS specifically based on human factors research and dealing with distraction and attentional demands of driving tasks are discussed in relation to issues involved in the development of standards

Freeway Porn & The Signs of Sign: Sex, Cigarettes and Censorship of Billboards

This article examines First Amendment issues raised by legislative efforts to regulate billboards that advertise adult-oriented enterprises and goods-namely, sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) and tobacco. As SOBs proliferate along highways in rural America, states are attempting to stop the only viable form of advertising SOBs have to attract the attention of passing motorists and truckers- highway-adjacent billboards. These signs of sin are the objects of censorship, even when they appear in text-only format. Likewise, in June 2009, President Obama signed into a new law giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to create regulations targeting billboards that advertise tobacco products. Those rules are under attack by Big Tobacco in Commonwealth Brands, Inc. v. United States. This article: (a) establishes important foundational steps to a First Amendment inquiry into the censorship of billboards for adult stores and tobacco products; (b) analyzes the reasons why legislators target such content for censorship; and (c) then exposes the flaws with such legislative rationales, including what the author dubs the secondary secondary-effects doctrine. Along the way, the article addresses the commercial speech doctrine and explains how courts apply it to instances of billboard censorship. The article concludes by analyzing a pending piece of SOB-billboard legislation from Michigan and suggesting ways it might be re-drafted to survive constitutional scrutiny. Significantly, the article exposes other related issues, from the fiscal realities of challenging billboard laws to the cultural realities of life in a sex-saturated society