Reduced sensitivity to visual looming inflates the risk posed by speeding vehicles when children try to cross the road

Almost all locomotor animals respond to visual looming or to discrete changes in optical size. The need to detect and process looming remains critically important for humans in everyday life. Road traffic statistics confirm that children up to 15 years old are overrepresented in pedestrian casualties. We demonstrate that, for a given pedestrian crossing time, vehicles traveling faster loom less than slower vehicles, which creates a dangerous illusion in which faster vehicles may be perceived as not approaching. Our results from perceptual tests of looming thresholds show strong developmental trends in sensitivity, such that children may not be able to detect vehicles approaching at speeds in excess of 20 mph. This creates a risk of injudicious road crossing in urban settings when traffic speeds are higher than 20 mph. The risk is exacerbated because vehicles moving faster than this speed are more likely to result in pedestrian fatalities

Why do drivers become safer over the first three months of driving? A longitudinal qualitative study

Drivers are at high crash risk when they begin independent driving, with liability decreasing steeply over the first three months. Their behavioural development, and other changes underlying improved safety are not well understood. We adopted an innovative longitudinal qualitative design, with thirteen newly qualified drivers completing a total of 36 semi-structured interviews, one, two and three months after acquiring a full UK driving license. The interviews probed high-risk factors for new drivers, as well as allowing space for generating novel road safety issues. Analysis adopted a dual deductive and inductive interpretative thematic approach, identifying three super-ordinate themes: (1) Improvements in car control skills and situation awareness; (2) A reduction in the thrill of taking risks when driving against a background of generally increasing driving speed; (3) Early concerns about their social status in the eyes of other road users during the early stages of driving, which may put pressure on them to drive faster than they felt comfortable with. The study provides important new leads towards understanding how novice driving becomes safer over the first few months of driving, including how well-studied concepts of driving skill and style may change during development of independent driving, and a focus on the less rigorously studied concept of social status

Home advantage and player nationality in international club football

The home advantage effect was investigated at a team and player level in Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League football using in-depth performance and disciplinary variables. Performance analysis revealed that the home team scored more goals, had more shots on and off target, had a greater share of possession, and won more corners than the away team. There was an opposite trend for disciplinary variables, with the home team committing less fouls than the away team, and receiving less yellow and red cards. There were home advantage effects at player level for goals, total shots, shots on target, assists, and yellow cards, as found in the team analysis. In addition, foreign players demonstrated a home advantage effect for goals scored, whereas domestic players scored an equivalent number of goals at home and away venues. Results are discussed in relation to the home advantage literature and wider implications for the sport

Evaluating the effectiveness of a road safety education intervention for pre-drivers: An application of the theory of planned behaviour

Background. Young drivers are overrepresented in road traffic fatalities and collisions. Attempts to address this problem with pre-driver education have not met with unambiguous success. However, there is a lack of research on whether pre-driver education can change psychological antecedents to behaviour. Aims. The framework of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was employed to assess the effectiveness of an educational intervention used across the UK that aims to improve attitudes to road safety in pre-drivers. Sample(s). Secondary school students aged 15–16 years participated in the research, drawn from 12 schools in the UK. A total of 199 students took part in Expt 1 and 430 in Expt 2. Method. Expt 1 employed a within-participants design to measure any changes in road safety beliefs from pre- to post-intervention and 5-month follow-up. Expt 2 used a between-participants design to test whether any changes were genuine or due to experimenter effects. Results. Results of Expt 1 revealed a small, short-term improvement in some pre-driver beliefs immediately following the educational intervention, but no effect on other beliefs, and some evidence of unintended outcomes. The small, significant improvements found in Expt 1were replicated in Expt 2, which is consistent with there being a genuine effect. Conclusions. Considering evidence from both experiments suggests the effectiveness of road safety education interventions are at best short term, and limited to some but not all psychological factors, with some risk of unintended consequences

Errors in motion processing amongst older drivers may increase accident risk

Accident statistics highlight that older drivers are more frequently involved in right-of-way collisions than younger drivers. Accurately gauging vehicle speed is critical for judgement of when to pull out from a junction safely in front of oncoming traffic. We used psychophysical methods to measure drivers’ ability to discriminate between different rates of looming presented by vehicles approaching at different speeds. We demonstrate that sensitivity to approach speed reduces by between 2.8 and 3.4 mph, dependent upon vehicle type, for every decade that age increases. We show that perceptual limitations for drivers over the age of 75 years can lead to a 50% reduction in time available to perform traffic manoeuvres, which may contribute in part to their overrepresentation in casualty statistics at junction. Results are discussed in terms of implications for road safety policy

Detection of vehicle approach in the presence of additional motion and simulated observer motion at road junctions

One of the key contributory factors for accident involvement is the misjudgment of vehicle approach. Past research has indicated that individuals can use the rate of visual “looming” in order to judge the time to arrival (TTA) of approaching vehicles. Although a large number of road traffic collisions occur at roadside junctions, very little research has focused on individuals’ abilities to detect the onset of visual looming within a complex road scene at junction scenarios. In this research, computer generated scenes with photorealistic vehicle images, and a psychophysical staircase methodology, were used to explore drivers’ ability to detect the approach of both motorcycles and cars within a contextually rich city scene. Across three experiments the effect of additional vehicular and observer motion on driver detection of vehicle approach was assessed. Results showed that individuals were significantly poorer at detecting the approach of the motorcycle stimulus compared with the car stimulus. Results also showed that additional vehicular motion within the scene had a negative effect on detection thresholds for the car stimulus. Finally, the results showed that introducing lateral global motion of the scene, such as might occur if the observer was moving steadily forward from a junction, negatively affected detection thresholds. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed, including how vehicles traveling at high speed are often below the threshold for detecting visual looming. Practical implications for road design and layout are discussed that address the perceptual errors noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

An application of the theory of planned behaviour to truck driving behaviour and compliance with regulations

A questionnaire study was conducted with truck drivers to help understand driving and compliance behaviour using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Path analysis examined the ability of the TPB to explain the direct and indirect factors involved in self-reported driving behaviour and regulation compliance. Law abiding driving behaviour in trucks was related more to attitudes, subjective norms and intentions than perceived behavioural control. For compliance with UK truck regulations, perceived behavioural control had the largest direct effect. The differing results of the path analyses for driving behaviour and compliance behaviour suggest that any future interventions that may be targeted at improving either on-road behaviour or compliance with regulations would require different approaches

The Effect of Disguise on Novice and Expert Tennis Players' Anticipation Ability

Skilled performers interpret cues in the preparatory movements of their opponents to anticipate future events in many sports. Little work has tested whether these cues can be disguised. Using a temporal occlusion paradigm, this paper examines the effect of disguise on an Australian sample of expert (16 male, 2 female, age M = 24.67, SD = 9.47 years) and novice players' (24 male, 38 female, age M = 22.26, SD = 5.24 years) anticipation of tennis ground strokes. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that expert anticipation was more accurate than novice overall (p < .001), and disguise reduced accuracy (p = .001). The disguise effect differed by expertise across occlusion points (p = .027). The experts' anticipatory advantage was removed by disguise at 40 ms before contact. Novice performance was significantly below chance for disguise shots occluded at contact. These results indicate that disguise is an important topic for research and practice

The effect of learning condition on perceptual anticipation, awareness and visual search

The efficacy of explicit and implicit learning paradigms was examined during the very early stages of learning the perceptual-motor anticipation task of predicting ball direction from temporally occluded footage of soccer penalty kicks. In addition, the effect of instructional condition on point-of-gaze during learning was examined. A significant improvement in horizontal prediction accuracy was observed in the explicit learning group; however, similar improvement was evident in a placebo group who watched footage of soccer matches. Only the explicit learning intervention resulted in changes in eye movement behaviour and increased awareness of relevant postural cues. Results are discussed in terms of methodological and practical issues regarding the employment of implicit perceptual training interventions