Influencing driver behaviour through road marking

This paper will describe how road marking can be used to influence driver behaviour in order to improve road safety and traffic flows. Extensive use will be made of examples from recent research undertaken by the authors on overtaking lane design, speed change management, managing speed around curves and improving the safety of high risk sections of roads. This research included both on-road and driving simulator-based measurements. The concept of self explaining roads and what is required to implement it will also be described

Road User Interactions: Patterns of Road Use and Perception of Driving Risk

The goal of the Road User Interactions research programme is a better understanding of the human factors of our road transport system: road user demographics, risk perceptions of road users, and the driving attitudes of various road user groups. Our analysis of the 1989 and 1999 New Zealand Household Travel Surveys identified several fundamental road user differences and consistent demographic trends over the past 10 years. The driver characteristics of gender, age, and area of residence (urban, secondary urban, and rural) are the demographic factors which most clearly differentiate New Zealand road user groups. Analysis of the patterns of road use suggests that, although these road user groups do drive at distinctly different times, there are periods of conflict which are also associated with the greatest crash risk for these drivers. Our analysis of a sample of road user groups in Hamilton, Auckland, Gisborne, New Plymouth, and Palmerston North found significant differences in their perceptions of risk and driving behaviours. Rural drivers and women drivers rated a range of driving situations as having greater risk than did the other road user groups, and they rated the high risk scenarios as being much riskier. Men indicated the greatest willingness to accept the risk in driving situations and rated their own driving skill as higher. Older drivers also rated driving situations as having higher risk, and young drivers generally rated low risk situations much lower than other drivers. In the survey of driving behaviour, young men in our sample reported very high levels of violations and aggressive violations. The male drivers’ rates of violations and aggressive violations were significantly higher than the women drivers’ and the number of both decreased significantly with age. Finally, inspection of crash data show that young drivers’ and older drivers’ crashes have some characteristics in common; both groups have a disproportionate number of crossing, turning, and manoeuvring crashes at intersections in the mid-afternoon

The effectiveness of delineation treatments

A literature review undertaken for Transit NZ has found that delineation has a significant effect on driver behaviour with, for example, shoulder rumble strips reducing run-off-theroad crashes by between 22% and 80% (average of 32% for all crashes and 44% for fatal run-of-the-road crashes). The concern that enhancing roadway delineation may sometimes be accompanied by an unwanted increase in drivers’ speeds (known as behavioural adaptation) is not borne out by the research and appears to be a phenomenon associated with a few restricted situations (e.g. where a centre line is added to an otherwise unmarked road). The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that profiled edge lines and centre lines provide drivers with positive guidance and produce significant reductions in crashes as a result of improving drivers’ lateral position. Further, unlike other safety measures that show decreased effectiveness over time due to a novelty effect, profiled lane delineation continues to work regardless of driver familiarity. There is no published research to suggest that profiled edge lines will decrease the effectiveness of a profiled centre line or will result in an increase in crash rates or an increase in the severity of crashes. However it has also been noted that local conditions have a major influence on the level of benefits that can be achieved through improved delineation

Oxygen supply and consumption in soilless culture: evaluation of an oxygen simulation model for cucumber

A soil oxygen simulation model (OXSI) was tested and evaluated for evaluating growing media with respect to aeration. In the model, local oxygen concentrations are calculated from coefficients of diffusion and consumption (respiration), assuming equilibrium conditions. Apparent oxygen diffusion coefficients (D) were determined under laboratory conditions in 5 cm high samples at different water contents (-3.2, -10 and -20 cm pressure heads). D values were positively related to air-filled porosity (AFP). For fine-graded perlite D ranged from 9.10-7 at AFP of 34 percent to 5.10-9 m2s-1 at AFP of 19 percent. Possibly due to absence of closed pores in rockwool, the AFP vs. D relation was different for rockwool compared to perlite: D for rockwool ranged from 2.10-6 at AFP of 56 percent to 3.10-9 m2s-1 at AFP of 3 percent. A greenhouse experiment with cucumber was carried out to determine respiration and realised oxygen concentrations. The cucumbers were grown in 20 cm high, 3.5 litre containers filled with fine-graded perlite and supplied with high-frequency irrigation. AFP varied between 25 and 45 percent. At three heights and on four occasions during growth, oxygen concentration ( f volume) in the medium varied between 16.6 and 20 n the perlite. Root respiration of the cucumbers as determined by two independent methods (in vivo and in vitro) ranged from 1.4 to 5.4 10-6 ml.ml-1.s-1. Using these respiration rates, OXSI calculated that no oxygen depletion may occur at D > 1 to 5 10-7 m2s-1, corresponding with an AFP of 30 percent for both perlite and rockwool. Anoxic condtions were calculated for D values of 10-8 m2s-1, corresponding with AFP below 10 percent for rockwool and 20 percent for perlite

Does haste make waste? The human factors of overtaking land design

The aim of this research was to improve overtaking safety and efficiency through improvements in road signage, markings, geometry and speed control associated with the placement and layout of passing lanes. The approach of the research was to explore the effects of several types of overtaking lane treatments in the safety and controlled environment of a state-of-the-art driving simulator. It was found that under the most benign conditions there were no differential effects of the three treatments. With poorer visibility or more taxing road geometry, the drivers relied more heavily on the road markings and signage and the effects of the treatments become more pronounced. The sensitivity to the more "challenging" situations was borne out by the greater speed differential between merge area sections at these sites

Singularities and Quinn spectra

We introduce singularities to Quinn spectra. It enables us to talk about ads with prescribed singularities and to explicitly construct highly structured representatives for prominent spectra like Morava K-theories or for L-theory with singularities. We develop a spectral sequence for the computation of the associated bordism groups and investigate product structures in the presence of singularities

Operations on integral lifts of K(n)

This very rough sketch is a sequel to arXiv:1808.08587; it presents evidence that operations on lifts of the functors K(n) to cohomology theories with values in modules over valuation rings of local number fields, indexed by Lubin-Tate groups of such fields, are extensions of the groups of automorphisms of the indexing group laws, by the exterior algebras on the normal bundle to the orbits of the group laws in the space of lifts.Comment: \S 2.0 hopefully less cryptic. To appear in the proceedings of the 2015 Nagoya conference honoring T Ohkawa. Comments very welcome