Safety considerations for railway crossings in a post-COVID world

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly changed how people live, work, and commute. Indeed, a significant proportion of individuals now work (at least partially) remotely; others continue to commute and are more likely to avoid using public transport to reduce their exposure to potential illnesses. With safety at railway crossings largely contingent on road traffic, such changes impact the safety at level crossings. Investigations are therefore necessary to understand whether the level crossing risks have changed. This study observed road traffic and non-compliance at two urban railway crossings in Australia before the pandemic started (September 2019) and after the end of the first national lockdown in Australia. Counts of road and rail traffic was recorded on a tablet, and non-compliance with the rules of the level crossing. A total of 14,048 road and 94 train movements were observed at the railway crossings. After the lockdown, road traffic at both crossings increased by 15% and 36%, respectively, while train traffic remained similar. Such traffic increase represents a risk increment of 10% and 15%, respectively, using the Australian Level Crossing Assessment Model (ALCAM). There was also an increased proportion of cars, reflecting a reduction in pedestrian and bus traffic. In terms of non-compliance, there was an increase in the number of vehicles that could not proceed through the crossing and were stopped immediately after or on the rail tracks. This increase was up to 3 times at the first crossing, largely over what would be expected due to traffic increase. To the knowledge of the authors at the time of submission, this research is the first to look at the effect of COVID-19 on traffic at railway level crossings in Australia. It aligns with what is known for other parts of the road network and identifies an increase in safety risks at railway crossings

On the horns of a dilemma: Key factors informing train horn use at rail level crossings

Questions are arising as to whether train horn use at level crossings remain beneficial for all types of crossings, environments, and users. Six focus groups were undertaken with experienced train drivers (n = 19) across five rail organisations and three Australian states, with data collected using a scenario-based task. Study findings revealed that train horn utilisation was highly varied, considered beneficial in some situations, but non-beneficial in others. The results suggest that the uses of trains horns need to be carefully unpacked if more clarity in policy and direction in potential alternatives is to be further investigated

Increasing awareness of distracted pedestrians at railway level crossings with illuminated in-ground lights

Pedestrian distraction is a growing problem. Current signage at railway level crossings may not be effective for pedestrians distracted by mobile devices, as it is designed for users looking ahead when walking rather than looking downwards as when using a mobile. Illuminated in-ground lights are an innovative solution to address this issue but have not been evaluated for use with distracted pedestrians. We conducted a 2 (in-ground lights yes/no) x 3 (distraction task none/auditory/visual) repeated measures field study (N=34) at a railway level crossing to assess whether distracted pedestrians could detect illuminated in-ground lights and how this impacted on visual scanning behaviour. Pedestrians detected the lights as accurately when distracted (visually or auditorily) compared to when not distracted, and eye scanning behaviour of the rail tracks with the in-ground lights was the same as for non-distracted levels. This is the first study to suggest that illuminated in-ground lights could be effective in attracting the attention of distracted pedestrians at railway level crossings

A mixed-methods study of driver education informed by the Goals for Driver Education: Do young drivers and educators agree on what was taught?

Evaluation research suggests that professional driver education and training has little effect on reducing the crash involvements of young drivers. Driver education and training programs have been criticised as being unsystematically designed and lacking an empirical or theoretical basis. The Goals for Driver Education (GDE) is a theoretical framework developed to address these criticisms. The GDE defines four hierarchical levels of driving behaviours and influences on driving and three individualised Person-specific factors that should be considered in driver education and training programs. The aim of this study was to compare and contrast, in a methodologically rigorous manner, the perceptions that young drivers (n = 22; Mage = 17.80 years, SD = 6.54 months) and driver educators (n = 10; Mage = 54.5 years, SD = 9.21 years) have of a professional driver education and training course they participated in or facilitated. Eight semi-structured focus groups were conducted and the GDE was used to direct the collection and analysis of the data. Young drivers mainly discussed basic driving skills located on the lower levels of the GDE rather than higher level abstract factors that increase risk for young drivers. Driver educators tended to group particular GDE levels and Person-specific factors together when discussing the driving course and paid limited attention to Goals and contexts of driving. Results suggest that driver educators should provide direct instruction regarding the more abstract social and contextual factors that influence driving to potentially increase the efficacy of driver education and training as a safety countermeasure

Safety implications of co-locating road signs: a driving simulator investigation

Background As road complexity increases the requirement for number of road signs also increases, although the amount of road side space does not. One practical strategy to address this is to present multiple road signs on the same gantry (sign co-location). However, there is very little research on the safety implications of this practice. Method 36 participants (mean age = 42.25 years, SD = 13.99, 18 females) completed three driving simulator scenarios, each scenario had a different sign co-location condition: no co-location, dual co-location and triple co-location. Each scenario presented similar information using direction signs, variable message signs and variable speed limit signs, under. Each drive included standard motorway driving (100 km/h speed zone) in free flow traffic and one emergency event where a lead vehicle suddenly braked. The scenario order was counterbalanced and the emergency event vehicle varied. Results Overall, there was no impact of co-locating signs on general driving performance. No significant difference was observed between conditions for reaction time and minimum headway in response to the emergency event. Participants were able to correctly choose their destination whether the signs were co-located or not. Discussion For the particular configuration of signs tested there is no evidence that co-location negatively impacts driving performance. However, there may be some implications for travel speed and the manner in which the emergency event is responded to. Future work should confirm the findings on real roads. These findings provided support for sign co-location as a practical and safe option for displaying multiple road signs in a confined area

Pedestrian Distraction at Railway Level Crossings: can Illuminated In-ground LEDs attract their Attention Back?

One major contributor to pedestrian risk of injury and death at railway level crossings in Australia and New Zealand are road users who are complacent, distracted or inattentive. Such users can either intentionally or unintentionally travel through a railway crossing, without looking first for oncoming trains. Increased use of mobile devices increases the prevalence of pedestrian distraction and tends to reduce the effectiveness of warning devices installed at level crossings. A potential innovative solution to combat this issue is to use in-ground LED visual warning devices. However, there is currently no evaluation of the safety improvements obtained from such an intervention. This research evaluated pedestrians’ eye gaze behaviour toward illuminated in-ground LEDs while conducting a distractive task with a mobile device or headphones. We conducted a laboratory study (N=20) where participants equipped with an eye tracker had to detect the activation of lights on the floor or on the wall under various distraction conditions. We found that such intervention could be very effective in attracting the attention of distracted pedestrians, even when participants looked at the screen of their phone, as they mainly used peripheral vision during this detection task. The Australasian Centre for Rail Innovation (ACRI) is now partnering with KiwiRail to trial such an intervention in the field at passively protected level crossings

Is it safe to cross? Identification of trains and their approach speed at level crossings

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Improving the safety at passive rail crossings is an ongoing issue worldwide. These crossings have no active warning systems to assist drivers’ decision-making and are completely reliant on the road user perceiving the approach of a train to decide whether to enter a crossing or not. This study aimed to better understand drivers’ judgements regarding approaching trains and their perceptions of safe crossing. Thirty-six participants completed a field-based protocol that involved detecting and judging the speeds of fast moving trains. They were asked to report when they first detected an approaching train, when they could first perceive it as moving, as well as providing speed estimates and a decision regarding when it would not be safe to cross. Participants detected the trains ∼2 km away and were able to perceive the trains as moving when they were 1.6 km away. Large differences were observed between participants but all could detect trains within the range of the longest sighting distances required at passive level crossings. Most participants greatly underestimated travelling speed by at least 30%, despite reporting high levels of confidence in their estimates. Further, most participants would have entered the crossing at a time when the lights would have been activated if the level crossing had been protected by flashing lights. These results suggest that the underestimation of high-speed trains could have significant safety implications for road users’ crossing behaviour, particularly as it reduces the amount of time and the safety margins that the driver has to cross the rail crossing

Drivers’ inability to assess their level of alertness on monotonous highways

Decline of alertness constitutes a normal physiological phenomenon but could be aggravated when drivers operate in monotonous environments, even in rested individuals. Driving performance is impaired and this increases crash risk due to inattention. This paper aims to show that road characteristics - namely road design (road geometry) and road side variability (signage and buildings) – influence subjective assessment of alertness by drivers. This study used a driving simulator to investigate the drivers’ ability to subjectively detect periods of time when their alertness is importantly reduced by varying road geometry and road environment. Driver’s EEG activity is recorded as a reference to evaluate objectively driver's alertness and is compared to self-reported alertness by participants. Twenty-five participants drove on four different scenarios (varying road design and road environment monotony) for forty minutes. It was observed that participants were significantly more accurate in their assessment before the driving task as compared to after (90% versus 60%). Errors in assessment were largely underestimations of their real alertness rather than over-estimations. The ability to detect low alertness as assessed with an EEG was highly dependent on the road monotony. Scenarios with low roadside variability resulted in high overestimation of the real alertness, which was not observed on monotonous road design. The findings have consequences for road safety and suggest that countermeasures to lapses of alertness cannot rely solely on self-assessment from drivers and road design should reduce environments with low variability

Using cooperative vehicle systems to collect near collision incidents events : a simulation study

On the road, near collision events (also close calls or near-miss incidents) largely outnumber actual crashes, yet most of them can never be recorded by current traffic data collection technologies or crashes analysis tools. The analysis of near collisions data is an important step in the process of reducing the crash rate. There have been several studies that have investigated near collisions; to our knowledge, this is the first study that uses the functionalities provided by cooperative vehicles to collect near misses information. We use the VISSIM traffic simulator and a custom C++ engine to simulate cooperative vehicles and their ability to detect near collision events. Our results showed that, within a simple simulated environment, adequate information on near collision events can be collected using the functionalities of cooperative perception systems. The relationship between the ratio of detected events and the ratio of equipped vehicle was shown to closely follow a squared law, and the largest source of nondetection was packet loss instead of packet delays and GPS imprecision

Predicting driver's hypovigilance on monotonous roads: literature review.

Drivers' ability to react to unpredictable events deteriorates when exposed to highly predictable and uneventful driving tasks. Particularly, highway design reduces the driving task mainly to a lane-keeping one. It contributes to hypovigilance and road crashes as drivers are often not aware that their driving behaviour is impaired. Monotony increases fatigue, however, the fatigue community has mainly focused on endogenous factors leading to fatigue such as sleep deprivation. This paper focuses on the exogenous factor monotony which contributes to hypovigilance. Objective measurements of the effects of monotonous driving conditions on the driver and the vehicle's dynamics is systematically reviewed with the aim of justifying the relevance of the need for a mathematical framework that could predict hypovigilance in real-time. Although electroencephalography (EEG) is one of the most reliable measures of vigilance, it is obtrusive. This suggests to predict from observable variables the time when the driver is hypovigilant. Outlined is a vision for future research in the modelling of driver vigilance decrement due to monotonous driving conditions. A mathematical model for predicting drivers’ hypovigilance using information like lane positioning, steering wheel movements and eye blinks is provided. Such a modelling of driver vigilance should enable the future development of an in-vehicle device that detects driver hypovigilance in advance, thus offering the potential to enhance road safety and prevent road crashes