Hazard Anticipation Research Articles

Can younger drivers be trained to scan for information that will reduce their risk in roadway traffic scenarios that are hard to identify as hazardous?

Younger drivers (18–21 years) are over-involved in crashes. Research suggests that one of the reasons for this over-involvement is their failure to scan areas of the roadway for information about potential risks in situations that are hazardous, but not obviously so. The primary objective of the present study is to develop and evaluate a training program that addresses this failure. It was hypothesised that PC-based hazard anticipation training would increase the likelihood that younger drivers would scan for potential hazards on the open road. In order to test this hypothesis, 12 trained and 12 untrained drivers' eye movements were measured as they drove a vehicle on local residential, feeder and arterial roads. Overall, the trained drivers were significantly more likely to gaze at areas of the roadway that contained information relevant to the reduction of risks (64.4%) than were the untrained drivers (37.4%). Significant training effects were observed even in situations on the road that were quite different from those shown in training. These findings have clear implications for the type of training of teen drivers that is necessary in order to increase their anticipation of hazards.

Drivers' Performance in Response to Sight-Limited Crash Scenarios at Midblock Crosswalks: Evaluation of Advance Yield Markings and Symbolic Signage

The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to determine whether changes in drivers' yielding behavior are observed in sight-limited scenarios at marked mid-block crosswalks when advance yield markings and symbolic signage are installed and (2) to develop a mathematical model of drivers' performance in these scenarios that can be used to predict what improvements might be made in future pedestrian crosswalk signing. The methodology employed included standard videotaped observations of staged pedestrian-vehicle interactions as well as novel in-vehicle evaluations of eye movement data as a surrogate measure for hazard anticipation. Advance yield markings increase the likelihood that a driver will yield for a pedestrian when there is an adequate sight distance, confirming previous results. However, when the sight distance is not adequate, there is no change in the likelihood that a driver will yield. Interestingly, among those who do yield, the advance yield markings and symbolic signage lead to increases in both the distance between the stopped vehicle and the crossing pedestrian and the number of glances to the right for a potential pedestrian. The results indicate that adding advance yield markings without improving sight distance does not result in significant improvements in yielding behavior. The mathematical model suggests that it is the failure to see the pedestrian, not the failure to see the advance yield markings and symbolic sign, that explains why there is no improvement. The data suggest that parking must be prohibited in the area between the yield line and the crosswalk.

The Effects of Leadership in the High Hazard Construction Sector: Injuries and Fatalities an Issue of Leadership and Not Hazard

Few studies have documented effective safety performance in the high hazard construction industry and examined why some companies are able to experience success in reducing injuries while their peers have not. This paper reviews the literature related to safety performance in the construction sector. Several questions are raised by this research: What role does management play in improving safety performance in the construction sector? What organizational factors are responsible for effective safety performance? The data in this research suggests that safety and health programs can only be successful if program elements such as management commitment, employee involvement, hazard anticipation, hazard abatement, and training are present.

The Ecology of Environmental Health

The Ecology of Environmental Health

Empirical Evaluation of Hazard Anticipation Behaviors in the Field and on Driving Simulator Using Eye Tracker

Eye behaviors have been used with driving simulators to evaluate the effectiveness of novice and older driver training programs. Driving simulators are often favored when drivers must be placed in risky situations. Because there was no study of whether eye behaviors observed on a driving simulator in risky scenarios were also observed in the field, the authors had both trained and untrained novice drivers maneuver a controlled set of 10 scenarios on a driving simulator. The scenarios were similar to a set of scenarios that a different, matched set of trained and untrained drivers had navigated in the field. Drivers in this simulator study were trained with the same PC program used by drivers in the field study. Five of the scenarios that the trained drivers saw on the simulator and in the field were similar to those seen in training on a PC (near transfer); the other five were similar in concept to those in training but different in surface features (far transfer). A fixation on the region of a scenario that had information relevant to identifying a risk was scored as recognizing the risk. On the simulator, trained drivers recognized the risk 41.7% more often than untrained drivers in the near-transfer scenarios and 32.6% more often in the far-transfer scenarios. In the field, trained drivers recognized the risk 38.8% more often in the near-transfer and 20.1% more often in the far-transfer scenarios. Both effects were highly significant, and the difference between them was not close to significant. Thus results from tests on a simulator have a close correspondence with those in the field.

Hazard Anticipation of Novice and Experienced Drivers

Considerable evidence from field and laboratory studies now indicates that a major difference between novice and experienced drivers is the extent to which they scan the world in front of them. One index is that experienced drivers make more horizontal eye movements than do novice drivers. In addition, the difference in eye movements between novice and experienced drivers in a driving simulator is not just a global pattern of behavior, since experienced drivers are more likely to examine specific areas of the visual display that could either contain a potential hazard or signal that a potentially hazardous situation is coming. The daytime simulator scenarios used had several cues that signaled potential risk. The present studies examined whether this advantage for experienced drivers would be (a) smaller in nighttime conditions when the cues would be much less salient and (b) smaller if some risks were foreshadowed with salient cues. The data indicated that neither change reduced the advantage for experienced drivers, even though the absolute level of performance changed for both groups (i.e., reduced in nighttime conditions and enhanced by foreshadowing cues). Thus, it appears that the expertise of experienced drivers that induces them to attend to areas where potential risks could appear is applied in a fairly wide range of situations. This finding suggests that inducing this expertise in younger drivers through training may have a significant effect on crash rates.

Interruption and Reorientation Effects of a Situation Awareness Probe on Driving Hazard Anticipation

A driving-based Hazard Perception Test of anticipation (HPT) was applied alongside an interruption-based Situation Awareness (SA) probe to investigate the effects of interruption and reorienting the operator to the task. Content of the SA probe was manipulated in four conditions: No queries, SA queries, orienting queries, and irrelevant queries. The findings were firstly that the HPT scores correlated with the SA probe scores in the SA queries condition. Secondly, there was a negative effect of interruption on HPT scores. Finally, HPT scores increased during SA queries and orienting queries but not during irrelevant queries. The results imply that previous research showing no interruption effects from SA probe methods may be due to the orienting effects of the queries compensating for a decrease in scores caused by interruption.

Flexural capacity of prestressed concrete beams reinforced with aramid fiber reinforced polymer (AFRP) rectangular tendons

The use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites is significantly growing in construction and infrastructure applications where durability under harsh environmental conditions is of great concern. Aramid fiber composite rectangular tendons have potential as reinforcements for concrete structures. Recent studies on prestressed concrete beams have showed brittle flexural failure due to the elastic rupture of the FRPs; however, for the maintenance and hazard anticipation of structures, the brittle failure mode is undesirable. In order to improve the ductility, a series of flexural tests was carried out on beams with bonded and/or unbonded rectangular rebars, or with additional non-tensioned (regular reinforced) rebars. Test results showed that ultimate deformation in the beam with unbonded rectangular rebars was 250% that of the beam with bonded rectangular rebars, while the loading capacity was 85%. The additional placement of reinforced rectangular rebars produced a 450% higher ultimate deformation. It was found that the ductility was significantly enhanced by the use of combination of bonded and unbonded rectangular rebars.

Strategies for ensuring safety with industrial robot systems

The use of industrial robots is considered from the viewpoint of the strategies employed to ensure health and safety. The British legal context for health and safety is reviewed as a background and a framework of strategies for ensuring safety is utilised to discuss research findings from 6 companies on 84 robots. Some problems with the systems' operations and the adaptations that resulted are considered. The study shows that the strategic means of hazard anticipation and control varied considerably, that systematic circumvention took place and that an over-reliance upon physical safeguards occurred whilst those related to people and their interactions with the systems were often neglected.