Increasing road-user speed and distance judgement
victoria-university-of-wellington
Fri Aug 03 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Increasing road-user speed and distance judgement
Friday, 3 August 2007, 12:43 am
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
MEDIA RELEASE
03 August 2007
Increasing road-users' speed and distance judgement
Providing road-users with training to improve their judgement of speed and distance will lead to a reduction in road traffic accidents, say the authors of a study of gap-acceptance decisions.
Gap-acceptance decisions are those involved in judging whether it is possible to complete manoeuvres such as overtaking, and crossing the road on foot, before the arrival of an oncoming vehicle. School of Psychology researchers Associate Professor David Harper and Dr Maree Hunt say a higher standard of decision-making is needed.
Funded by the John Bailey Road Safety Research Fund, the study identified procedures to teach road users to focus on speed as well as distance to an oncoming vehicle. Drs Harper and Hunt then developed a user-friendly training system based on the most-effective procedures identified.
Potential training procedures were examined using younger adults but the effectiveness of the training system was investigated using older adults as this is a particularly vulnerable group identified by previous studies and reflected in Ministry of Transport statistics.
They say that while the number of fatalities has continued to decrease since 2001, over recent years the number of reported crashes, and injuries and hospitalisations as a result of accidents have remained fairly constant (MOT, 2006). Surveys since 2001 indicate a decrease in drink driving and speeding. In contrast, an examination of annual road crash statistics shows a lack of change in the incidence of accidents that may reflect non-intentional driving errors related to poor judgement of speed and distance.
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"Interventions that have targeted the intentional and dangerous driving behaviours continue to be effective but are insufficient to continue to reduce the number of injuries. This signals the need to identify additional approaches to road safety, and targeting non-intentional errors made by poor judgement can be expected to lead to further reductions in crashes," Drs Harper and Hunt say.
They say the ability to simultaneously take into account the distance to, and the speed of, an oncoming vehicle, is required to accurately determine when the vehicle will arrive.
"Current research indicates that people, irrespective of road-user type and age, usually rely heavily on distance when making gap assessments, either accepting or rejecting gaps based on how far away the oncoming vehicle is, and neglecting the speed of that vehicle. It is likely that if people can be taught to incorporate speed information into their judgements then crashes will be reduced."
ENDS
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