Driving without wings: the effect of different digital mirror locations on the visual behaviour, performance and opinions of drivers

Drivers' awareness of the rearward road scene is critical when contemplating or executing lane-change manoeuvres, such as overtaking. Preliminary investigations have speculated on the use of rear-facing cameras to relay images to displays mounted inside the car to create ‘digital mirrors'. These may overcome many of the limitations associated with traditional ‘wing’ and rear-view mirrors, yet will inevitably effect drivers' normal visual scanning behaviour, and may force them to consider the rearward road scene from an unfamiliar perspective that is incongruent with their mental model of the outside world. We describe a study conducted within a medium-fidelity simulator aiming to explore the visual behaviour, driving performance and opinions of drivers while using internally located digital mirrors during different overtaking manoeuvres. Using a generic UK motorway scenario, thirty-eight experienced drivers conducted overtaking manoeuvres using each of five different layouts of digital mirrors with varying degrees of ‘real-world’ mapping. The results showed reductions in decision time for lane changes and eyes-off road time while using the digital mirrors, when compared with baseline traditional reflective mirrors, suggesting that digital displays may enable drivers to more rapidly pick up the salient information from the rearward road scene. Subjectively, drivers preferred configurations that most closely matched existing mirror locations, where aspects of real-world mapping were largely preserved. The research highlights important human factors issues that require further investigation prior to further development/implementation of digital mirrors within vehicles. Future work should also aim to validate findings within real-world on-road environments whilst considering the effects of digital mirrors on other important visual behaviour characteristics, such as depth perception

Heritage Quay: What Will You Discover? Transforming the Archives of the University of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK

The Heritage Quay project is changing how archive services at the University of Huddersfield are delivered. This article examines how the Staff/Space/Collections dependency model and Customer Service Excellence framework have been used, and what lessons can be drawn for other archives

Comparing and learning from English and American higher education access and completion policies

England and the United States provide a very interesting pairing as countries with many similarities, but also instructive dissimilarities, with respect to their policies for higher education access and success. We focus on five key policy strands: student information provision; outreach from higher education institutions; student financial aid; affirmative action or contextualisation in higher education admissions; and programmes to improve higher education retention and completion. At the end, we draw conclusions on what England and the US can learn from each other. The US would benefit from following England in using Access and Participation Plans to govern university outreach efforts, making more use of income-contingent loans, and expanding the range of information provided to prospective higher education students. Meanwhile, England would benefit from following the US in making greater use of grant aid to students, devoting more policy attention to educational decisions students are making in early secondary school, and expanding its use of contextualised admissions. While we focus on England and the US, we think that the policy recommendations we make carry wider applicability. Many other countries with somewhat similar educational structures, experiences, and challenges could learn useful lessons from the policy experiences of these two countries

Profit or Utility Maximizing? : Strategy, tactics and the Municipal Tramways of York, c. 1918-1935

Purpose: This paper contests Mees (2010) theory that publically owned public transport operators normatively target their resources to maximize service rather than profit. Mees argues that neoliberal governments in the Anglosphere were mistaken to privatize their undertakings yet we show that the British ethos of municipal trading meant that municipalities always saw public transport as more of a business than a service. Methodology: We use an archival microstudy of the municipal tramway undertaking of the English city of York, using municipal archives triangulated with local and industry media sources. Findings: We propose the refination of the Mees spectrum of public transport from public to private (2010, pp. 73–75) to note that public undertakings can be operated within a profit-maximizing framework. Originality/Value: We provide a rare historical explication of an individual municipal trading enterprise and tramway system placed in its economic context together with its wider theoretical implications

Atlantic Archive: UK-US Relations in an Age of Global War 1939-1945 project

This Atlantic Archive was created in 2013 by The Institute of Latin America Studies researcher Dr. Matthew Hill and colleagues, to support the Atlantic Archive: UK-US Relations in an Age of Global War 1939-1945 project at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London. It was a free online ePrints catalogue of digitised primary sources (archive.atlantic-archive.org) that examine official British opinion towards the United States during WWII (1939-1945) within political, economic and cultural frames. A wordpress blog was used for the web frontend of the project (atlantic-archive.org). Both of these systems were decommissioned in 2018 and the metadata and digitised access copies have been migrated here to SAS-Space. The high resolution digitised objects have been stored in the SAS Digital archive. Webarchives of these sites as they appeared in 2018 were created and are attached to this item below. You can view the Repository's original Policies for use of material in the pages contained within the webarchive