Review of medical fitness to drive in Europe

Understanding the impact of medical fitness to drive is important as the driving population ages. This desktop study set out to examine older driver safety from international best evidence on various aspects likely to affect an older person’s fitness to drive, including the role of education, driver retraining, self-awareness, and cognitive preconditions. The review also reviewed the influence of medication and the role of the medical practitioner, as well as the effectiveness of mandatory licensing retesting. Key recommendations included the need for a standardised screening process across all Member States in assessing fitness to drive, consistent guidelines to assist medical practitioners in their role of assessing a patient’s level of safety, and promotion of materials to help older people make their own decision when to cease driving. A wider use of Medical Assessment Boards across Europe to ensure a consistent process in assessment of fitness to drive would be helpful and the development of an effective and transparent screening protocol based on functional capability is warranted when assessing fitness to drive among older drivers

kD-STR : a method for spatio-temporal data reduction and modelling

Analysing and learning from spatio-temporal datasets is an important process in many domains, including transportation, healthcare and meteorology. In particular, data collected by sensors in the environment allows us to understand and model the processes acting within the environment. Recently, the volume of spatio-temporal data collected has increased significantly, presenting several challenges for data scientists. Methods are therefore needed to reduce the quantity of data that needs to be processed in order to analyse and learn from spatio-temporal datasets. In this article, we present the -Dimensional Spatio-Temporal Reduction method (D-STR) for reducing the quantity of data used to store a dataset whilst enabling multiple types of analysis on the reduced dataset. D-STR uses hierarchical partitioning to find spatio-temporal regions of similar instances, and models the instances within each region to summarise the dataset. We demonstrate the generality of D-STR with three datasets exhibiting different spatio-temporal characteristics and present results for a range of data modelling techniques. Finally, we compare D-STR with other techniques for reducing the volume of spatio-temporal data. Our results demonstrate that D-STR is effective in reducing spatio-temporal data and generalises to datasets that exhibit different properties

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

Deliverable Nr 4 – Consistent treatment in relation to the severity of a curve, a driving simulator study

The overall aim of this work is to develop guidelines for evaluation of potential treatments, categorized as “self-explaining treatments” by the use of a driving simulator. More specific the driving simulator study had the aim: \u95 To evaluate the effectiveness of curve treatments, in particular to determine whether a combination of treatments on curves according to their severity could help drivers correctly establish the severity of a curve in advance, and therefore adapt their speed appropriately. In total 35 participants, divided into two groups, drove approximately 46 minutes on a rural road with 3 baseline curves without treatment and 9 curves with treatment of varying levels. In total three different treatment levels and three different curves were used. One group received treatments before each curve that correspond to the severity of the curve (slight curve – low treatment level; moderate curve – medium treatment level; severe curve – high treatment level); the other group experienced inconsistent treatments by being exposed to all nine possible combination of curve and treatments. The analysis of the effects on speed in average and at each point (v0 to v5) was done with Mixed Model ANOVA. Dependent variables were speed measurements in the different points along the curve (v0 to v5) and the average speed through the total curve (from point v0 to v5). The analyses were done both for absolute speeds and for the relative change in speed from starting point (v0). Independent variables were consistent/inconsistent group; curve (1-3), treatment level (1–3) and time on task, here called order (1–9). Subject was used as random and nested on group. In addition the most severe curve was analysed separately in order to compare the groups. In conclusion the result showed that in most cases there were significant effects for treatment levels, severity of the curve, order (time on task), and for subject. There was no significant main effect on group (consistent/inconsistent). However, there was an interaction between curve and group, telling us that the consistent marking significantly reduced the average speed among those with consistent treatment. This holds true also for the speed at point v2, v3 and v5. A final argument for the effectiveness of consistent treatment is that if only the severe curve was considered, there was a significant effect of group. Guidelines for evaluation It was found that our used method to evaluate the effects of speed adjustment worked well. 35 participants each drove approximately 45 minutes. They were divided into a consistent and one inconsistent group. Three levels of treatment and three severities of curves were used. The dependent variable was the speed measured at three points along the curve. This methodology could be used to evaluate other types of self-explaining treatments. But since a driving simulator study requires a lot of planning (expensive) it is suggested to initially do an expert workshop to evaluate and select the suitable SER treatment and also detailed scenario description

Effects of contextual cues in recall and recognition memory: The misinformation effect reconsidered

Research in semantic word list-lea'ing paradigms suggests that presentation modality during encoding may influence word recognition at test. Given these findings, it is argued that some previous misinformation effect research might contain methodologies which are problematic. Misleading information groups typically receive erroneous information in written narratives, which may be further impeded by written tests. Results may therefore be explained by misinformation or encoding specificity. In two experiments, participants received restated, neutral, and misleading post-event information through auditory or written modalities. Participants' recognition and recall of critical details about the source event were tested. In a recognition test using the standard testing procedure, there were no condition differences for post-event information presented via an auditory modality. However, for post-event information presented in the text modality, recognition performance was more accurate for restated information relative to neutral information, which in-turn was better than the misled condition. Using the modified testing procedure, the differences were again limited to the text condition. Better performance was evident in the restated condition relative to the average of the neutral and the misled conditions, and there was no difference in performance between the neutral and the misled conditions. Using a recall test, however, there was no effect of modality. Memory was significantly better for restated information than for the average of the neutral and the misled conditions and poorer in the misled condition relative to the neutral condition. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of contextual cues at test, and methodological and interpretational limitations associated with previous research

The impact of Relative Prevalence on dual-target search for threat items from airport X-ray screening

The probability of target presentation in visual search tasks influences target detection performance: thisis known as the prevalence effect (Wolfe et al., 2005). Additionally, searching for several targets simultaneouslyreduces search performance: this is known as the dual-target cost (DTC: Menneer et al., 2007).The interaction between the DTC and prevalence effect was investigated in a single study by presentingone target in dual-target search at a higher level of prevalence than the other target (Target A: 45% Prevalence;Target B: 5% Prevalence). An overall DTC was found for both RTs and response accuracy. Furthermore,there was an effect of target prevalence in dual-target search, suggesting that, when one target ispresented at a higher level of prevalence than the other, both the dual-target cost and the prevalenceeffect contribute to decrements in performance. The implications for airport X-ray screening arediscussed