Safe Decisions Research Articles

Mycological rationality: Heuristics, perception and decision-making in mushroom foraging

AbstractHow do mushroom foragers make safe and efficient decisions under uncertainty, or deal with the genuine risks of misidentification and poisoning? This article is an inquiry into ecological rationality, heuristics, perception, and decision-making in mushroom foraging. By surveying 894 Finnish mushroom foragers, this article illustrates how socially learned rules of thumb and heuristics are used in mushroom foraging, and how simple heuristics are often complemented by more complex and intuitive decision-making. The results illustrate how traditional foraging cultures have evolved precautionary heuristics to deal with uncertainties and poisonous species, and how foragers develop selective attention through experience. The study invites us to consider whether other human foraging cultures might use heuristics similarly, how and why such traditions have culturally evolved, and whether early hunter-gatherers might have used simple heuristics to deal with uncertainty.

AI Powered Holistic Solution for Travelersduring Pandemic

As the world is engulfed with COVID-19 pandemic and the glimpse of vaccine is still a distant dream, taking precautions and maintaining the norms suggested by WHO will keep us safe. With this, we present in this paper a solution that would help travelers induce confidence in traveling while keeping in mind the guidelines that must be followed. The solution focuses on an end to end service that will not only help the travelers to make informed and safe decisions but also allow the hospitality industry to monetize from this application. This paper is focused on a detailed analysis of the solution that is being presented to tackle the problems faced by various industries and their fear of resuming the work. A software-based approach is taken for providing a simple and engaging user experience to the user along with an AI approach to detect and predict the COVID trend in various cities. Along with this, a system that detects if people are wearing a mask or not will also be verified by thealgorithm.

Operational limits for aquaculture operations from a risk and safety perspective

Current decision making regarding whether to abort a high-risk aquaculture operation in a Norwegian fish farm is mainly experience-driven. The on-site personnel decides whether to start/delay/abort operations primarily based on their subjective judgement about whether they can handle the situation. The risk is considered implicitly as “gut feelings”. There are no explicit operational limits nor a structured process to derive these for high-risk operations. In this research, a predefine safety-critical attributes have been identified from major accident scenarios to guide machine learning process to define operational limits based on multi-source data. Bayesian network, Tree Augmented Naïve Bayes (TAN) search algorithms were selected to build up prediction model so that operational limits upon a given condition can be decided. The paper concludes that machine learning techniques have great potential to be used to support safe decision-making in high-risk aquaculture operation, and the risk-based operational limits facilitates better understanding of operational context, and comprehension of the meaning of several deviations which may indicate a dangerous situation.

Emotion Recognition and Traffic-Related Risk-Taking Behavior in Patients with Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs), such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, and Huntington's disease, inevitably lead to impairments in higher-order cognitive functions, including the perception of emotional cues and decision-making behavior. Such impairments are likely to cause risky daily life behavior, for instance, in traffic. Impaired recognition of emotional expressions, such as fear, is considered a marker of impaired experience of emotions. Lower fear experience can, in turn, be related to risk-taking behavior. The aim of our study was to investigate whether impaired emotion recognition in patients with NDD is indeed related to unsafe decision-making in risky everyday life situations, which has not been investigated yet. Fifty-one patients with an NDD were included. Emotion recognition was measured with the Facial Expressions of Emotions: Stimuli and Test (FEEST). Risk-taking behavior was measured with driving simulator scenarios and the Action Selection Test (AST). Data from matched healthy controls were used: FEEST (n = 182), AST (n = 36), and driving simulator (n = 18). Compared to healthy controls, patients showed significantly worse emotion recognition, particularly of anger, disgust, fear, and sadness. Furthermore, patients took significantly more risks in the driving simulator rides and the AST. Only poor recognition of fear was related to a higher amount of risky decisions in situations involving a direct danger. To determine whether patients with an NDD are still fit to drive, it is crucial to assess their ability to make safe decisions. Measuring emotion recognition may be a valuable contribution to this judgment.

Measuring the Scale of Hospital Health Record System Fragmentation in England

Many patients experience a fragmented health care journey that involves transitions of care between different hospitals. Ineffective sharing of health data between hospitals can impair the delivery of safe, high‐quality care. This study aimed to identify the unmet need for interhospital data sharing by quantifying the movement of patients between acute hospital trusts and health record systems in the NHS in England.This retrospective observational review examined Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), a national hospital administrative dataset relating to patient encounters with the NHS in England. Outcome measures included the frequency of patient encounters with multiple hospital trusts and the frequency of consecutive encounters with hospitals using different health record systems.All adult patients with inpatient, emergency department, or outpatient encounters at acute hospitals in the NHS in England during the 12‐month period from April 2017 to April 2018 were included.21,286,873 patients were involved in 121,351,837 encounters at 152 included NHS trusts over the one‐year period. There was limited regional alignment of electronic health record (EHR) systems in the 117 (77.0%) hospital trusts that were using EHR systems. 15,736,863 (73.9%) patients had two or more encounters with the included trusts and 3,931,255 (25.0%) of those attended two or more trusts. Over half (53.6%) of these patients had encounters shared between just 20 pairs of hospitals. Only two of these pairs of trusts used the same EHR system. On 11,017,767 (9.1%) occasions, patients presented to a hospital using a different EHR, or paper record system, to their previous hospital attendance.This study found that nearly four million patients accessed care at two or more different NHS hospital trusts over the one‐year study period, highlighting the demand for effective interhospital data sharing. Most of the pairs of hospital trusts that commonly share patients do not use the same health record systems. The fragmented distribution of health record systems that exists in the NHS in England represents a significant barrier to interhospital data sharing and interoperability.To make informed and safe decisions for patients negotiating increasingly complex health care systems, clinicians need the right information about the right patient in the right place at the right time. The findings from this study provide guidance for policy makers, clinicians, service managers, researchers, software providers, and patients to better understand and improve how data may be shared between hospitals. The methods used in this research could be applied to health care systems in other settings to guide the procurement and coordination of EHR systems to promote interoperability and effective data sharing.National Institute for Health Research (UK).

Effective communication in the context of safe design decision making

The proactive practice of anticipating and ‘designing out’ health and safety (H&S) risks at the early stage of a construction project, known as safety in design, is a legislative requirement in Australia, as in many other countries. Effective communication between design participants and collaborative decision-making during the design stage have been highlighted in previous research as key factors contributing to effective safety in design. However, previous research has not explicitly identified what constitutes effective communication. To explore how the interactions between design and construction decision-makers impact on the quality of design decisions and their H&S outcomes in construction projects, six cases were studied in detail. In each case study, a multilevel framework was implemented representing the design process as a socio-technical network. Thus, communication activities were considered within the context of design decision-making, and the features of effective communication were investigated. The results indicate that effective interaction networks need to provide decision makers with access to suitable knowledge sources and enable the mobility and combination of existing knowledge and new or emerging project information to create design solutions with positive H&S outcomes. The study also revealed certain network features which contribute to alignment between the information interdependencies of design decisions and the communication patterns that underpin them, leading to better safety in design outcomes. The findings provide a realistic understanding of effective communication in the context of safety in design.

The Effects of Multiple Factors on Elderly Pedestrians’ Speed Perception and Stopping Distance Estimation of Approaching Vehicles

To make safe road-crossing decisions, it is necessary for pedestrians to accurately estimate the speed and stopping distance of approaching vehicles. Accordingly, the objective of our study was to examine the effects of multiple factors, such as weather conditions, context time (day or night), and illuminance of the roads, on older pedestrians’ (>60 years old) speed perception and stopping distance estimation of approaching vehicles. The participants in this study included 48 older participants who were asked to estimate the speed and stopping distance of approaching vehicles based on 12 s video clips that were selected from natural conditions. The results revealed that actual speeds, weather, context time, and lighting conditions played important roles in the performance of the participants. Compared with young adults, older pedestrians were found to have smaller accurate estimation intervals that varied by multidimensional influencing factors and thus resulted in missing road-crossing opportunities at lower vehicles’ speeds and increasing road-crossing dangers at higher speeds. The older pedestrians’ performance with respect to speed perception and stopping distance estimation is modeled using a regression model with a complex level of tasks. These models can be used by engineers when establishing speed limits and lighting conditions in the areas with senior residents.

Exploring the crossing behaviours and visual attention allocation of children in primary school in an outdoor road environment

Primary school children are likely to participate in traffic as pedestrian road users. Due to their immature levels of physical and cognitive development, it is difficult for children to make safe decisions while crossing roads. The aim of this study was to analyse the behaviour characteristics and visual attention distribution of children in primary school as they cross roads. In total, 10 children successively passed through an unsignalised intersection, an unsignalised T-intersection and a signalised intersection on a designated test route in an outdoor road environment. Three HD cameras and an eye tracker were employed to record and analyse their crossing behaviour and visual attention allocation. When crossing the three types of intersections, the children allocated more fixation points and a larger proportion of fixation time in the small area in front of their bodies and the area where their eyes were facing and lacked a visual search of the traffic areas on the left and right sides of the zebra crossing. The fixation area was relatively singular. The most common unsafe behaviour was crossing without observing the traffic environment. The frequency of left and right observations of the traffic environment was low, reaching the lowest level at the unsignalised T-intersection. Children in primary school have not yet fully mastered safe crossing behaviours. These findings indicate the need for targeted programmes to train children to cross roads safely and correctly, and provide useful information for researchers and road designers.

Effect of text message alerts on miners evacuation decisions

This work evaluates the effect of increasing level of detail in emergency alerts on underground miners’ emergency evacuation decisions. An offline survey was administered to underground miners, which provided miners simulated alerts with ever-increasing levels of information about fire, cave in, and explosion emergency scenarios. The simulated evacuation exercise evaluated differences in evacuation decisions due to the channel of communication (text message or through a co-worker). The results indicate that the content of the alert messages has a significant effect on miners’ decisions with more miners choosing to evacuate when more detail is provided about the urgency of the situation. The results also indicate that the evacuation decisions of the participants are related to their mining experience, marital status, age, income, and use of technology. Depending on the scenario, 51–70% of the miners chose not to shelter in place or go to the refuge chamber as instructed in the simulation. This tendency to ignore guidance is possibly due to a lack of clarity in the message sent to them or the poorly crafted messages that do not account for how the miners will account for risk under uncertainty. It appears that the miners are acting in a loss-averse manner given the uncertainty, as per prospect theory. This study also concludes that, overall, the channel of communication does not significantly affect the miners’ evacuation decisions. This may bode well for using text message alerts in mine emergency management. This work presents a foundation for developing effective text messages for guiding miners in emergencies by building off existing research on short-form emergency warnings and applying the principles to the mining context to provide evidence for new emergency alert technologies mandated new underground coal mine safety regulations. Future research should evaluate miners’ decision-making using prospect theory to account for miners’ perception of risk under uncertainty, so that persuasive text messages can be designed to elicit safe evacuation decisions.

Interaction of load-bearing structures of the house with a pile basis

This paper presents the results of research of design solutions of multi-story building structures with the support of the extreme vertical load-bearing elements of the frame on the piles of the retaining wall. The research is performed on the basis of numerical modeling in three-dimensional formulation for the elements of the system «soil base - foundation - above-ground structures» at static loads. The analysis of the stress-strain state (SST) in the elements of the frame with such constructive solutions is carried out. Stresses of stress concentration in which irreversible deformations may occur at design loads have been identified.
 It is established that despite the fact that due to the change of the structural scheme of the foundation it was possible to achieve a relative difference of subsidence close to the normative value and a significant reduction of bending moments in the grille, there remained zones in the floor slabs manifestations of irreversible deformations were predicted. Recommendations are given and changes to the constructive scheme of the house are offered which allow to provide safe design decisions for all term of operation of the house.
 Another feature of the studied building is that the proposed design of foundations with piles of short length (6 m). With this solution, the zones of deformation under the height of the pile and the sole of the piles are closed and the deformations are determined by the size of the structure [1], and the piles only improve the soil properties in the upper part of the base due to its compaction. This solution allows you to achieve an economic effect by reducing the length of the piles, while ensuring the subsidence of the house within acceptable values.

Towards a framework of key technologies for drones

The potential applications for drones, especially those in manned areas or into non-segregated airspace, are currently not possible without the development and validation of certain key enabling technologies: “detect and avoid”, “air traffic management”, “command and control (C2) link”, and “security and cyber resilience”. This issue has a high impact on European innovation as identified by SESAR JU and demands R&D investments and incentives for the convergence of shared technologies and markets. In this paper, we discuss the vision of COMP4DRONES project to complement SESAR JU efforts with a particular focus on safe software and hardware drone architectures. COMP4DRONES will bear a holistically designed ecosystem ranging from application to electronic components. The ecosystem aims at supporting (1) efficient customization and incremental assurance of drone-embedded platforms, (2) safe autonomous decision making concerning individual or cooperative missions, (3) trustworthy drone-to-drone and drone-to- ground communications even in presence of malicious attackers and under the intrinsic platform constraints, and (4) agile and cost-effective design and assurance of drone modules and systems. Lead applications driving ecosystem development and benchmarking on the fields of transport, inspection, logistic, precision agriculture, and parcel delivery will be produced.

A comparison between independent nurse prescribing and patient group directions in the safety and appropriateness of medication provision in United Kingdom sexual health services: A mixed methods study

BackgroundUnited Kingdom legislation allows nurses to autonomously provide medications as independent nurse prescribers or using patient group directions. Evidence of medication safety and appropriateness is limited. We compared nurse prescribers and patient group direction users in terms of prevalence, types and severity of medication provision errors. MethodsObjectives: Compare safety and appropriateness of medication provision between nurse prescribers and patient group direction users. Design: Mixed methodsclinical notes review and nurse-patient consultation observations. SettingFive United Kingdom sexual health services. Selection criteria‘Clinical notes review’ included a random selection of nurse-patient consultations July-December 2015, 743 consultations managed by nurse prescribers and 939 consultations by patient group direction users. ‘Observation study’ involved 15 nurse prescriber and 15 patient group direction user nurse-patient medication consultations. Patients aged under 16 or non-English speaking were excluded. MeasurementsMedication safety/appropriateness was compared between nurse prescribers and patient group direction users. Medication provision errors were categorised and assigned severity ratings. The Medication Appropriateness Index and the Prescribing Framework were used to assess medication provision. ResultsOf 1682 clinical notes (nurse prescribers=743, 44%; patient group directions=939, 56%), 879 involved the provision of 1357 medications (nurse prescribers=399, 54%; patient group directions=480, 51%). The overall error rate was 8.5% (1844 errors from a potential 21,738 errors), predominantly related to documentation omissions. Nurse prescribers were more likely to make an error compared to patient group directions users (error rates 9% versus 8%, respectively; p=0.001); most were ‘minor’ (nurse prescribers=489, 56%; patient group directions=602, 62%). Both nurse prescribers and patient group direction users made safe medication decisions (n=1640 of 1682 patient care episodes, 98%); however, patient group directions users worked outside patient group directions restrictions in 39 (8%) of consultations. In 101 consultations, medication was indicated but not documented as offered/provided. From 30 observed consultations assessed against the Prescribing Framework, nurse prescribers’ and patient group directions users’ clinical practice were comparable (maximum score 46: nurse prescribers=44.7; patient group direction=45.4, p=0.41). ConclusionSexual health nurse prescribers and patient group direction users provided safe and therapeutically appropriate medication. Improvements in clinical documentation are recommended. Moreover, patient group directions users should be encouraged to adhere to patient group directions’ governance restrictions, such as through regular training, audits and staff updates.

Pediatric non-red cell blood product transfusion practices: what's the evidence to guide transfusion of the 'yellow' blood products?

Research studies pertaining to the management of pediatric non-red cell blood product transfusion is limited. Clinical practices vary within disciplines and regions. Anesthesiologists need evidence-based guidelines to make appropriate and safe decisions regarding transfusion of the 'yellow' blood products for pediatric patients. This review outlines clinical indications for transfusion of fresh frozen plasma, cryoprecipitate, platelets, and fibrinogen concentrate in pediatrics. Recent studies of non-red blood cell transfusions in critical, but stable situations are highlighted. Recommendations to guide transfusion of the 'yellow' blood products in operative and non-operative settings are summarized. Special attention is drawn to guidelines in massive hemorrhage and trauma situations. Evidence-based guidelines and expert consensus recommendations exist to guide the transfusion of pediatric non-red blood products and should be followed when transfusing the 'yellow' blood components. As high-quality studies in neonates, infants and children are limited, future research should broaden our knowledge in this direction with the goal to use restrictive strategies to improve patient outcomes.

Calculation Of The Radiation Temperature Of The Urban Development Environment

The radiation ambient temperature is one of the microclimatic indicators of urban areas, which determines the safe stay of people in them during the warm period of the year. The ability of artificial coatings to accumulate and radiate heat energy should be taken into account in making competent urban planning decisions to eliminate or reduce the additional heat load on the urban environment. The calculation of radiation temperatures of the environment contributes to the adoption of environmentally safe urban planning decisions of specific areas. Using such "tools" as changing the orientation of the urban object to the cardinal directions, thermal properties of anthropogenic coatings, their concentration (density), and exposure, it is possible to control the radiation power of the surrounding surfaces, and, accordingly, the value of radiation temperatures. Research with the use of the globe thermometer confirms change in the radiation temperatures. In this case, the elementary area can be replaced with the reduced site, which will be the limit when calculating the irradiance coefficients of the required accuracy from the elements of urban development. The size of the reduced site is usually a uniform architectural element of the facade plane, for example, the size of a standard window or half of the average wall panel, etc., which is convenient for assigning the materials of the above sites radiation absorption coefficients and calculating or measuring the surface temperature. A method for calculating radiation temperatures, which is based on determining the irradiation coefficients from the globe thermometer to the surrounding fences of an imaginary space (parallelepiped) of the yard, with due regard for their surface temperatures, is proposed.

Very early discharge after cardiac implantable electronic device implantations: is this the future?

To limit the ever-increasing healthcare costs, strategies to minimize hospitalization length are warranted. In this perspective, early discharge (the same day or after < 24h) post-cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) implantation might represent a useful strategy; nevertheless, it is imperative first to understand the timing of (potentially lethal) complications and evaluate whether this is not only an effective but also a safe clinical decision. A retrospective cohort analysis of all patients undergoing new CIED implantation from Jan 2008 to Dec 2014 was conducted. Patient demographics, comorbidities, and timing of complications post CIED implantation were evaluated, and the timing of complications was divided into intra-operative, 0-6h (h), 6 to 24h, and > 24h post-implant. One-year post-implant follow-up (FU) was performed in our CIED clinic. A total of 1868 patients (68% men, average age 70years, 85% hypertension, 39% diabetes, 57% coronary artery disease, and average left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) 41%) received 703 (38%) pacemaker, 448 (24%) implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), 639 (34%) cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices, and 78 (4.2%) cardiac contractility modulation. A total of 199 (11%) patients experienced 214 complications. Most (75%) occurred > 24h post-implantation (with a median of 7days). At univariate analysis, complications occurred more often in patients with a lower LVEF, on anticoagulation/antiplatelet therapy, and undergoing ICD/CRT-D implantation (p< 0.05 for all). Most complications occur > 24h after first time CIED implantation. Therefore, it might not be optimal to discharge patients in ≤ 24h, unless extensive ambulatory monitoring for complications is available.

Project E.N.T.A.B.L.A.D.O: A Basis for Promoting the Drug Abuse Prevention Advocacy And Practices

People who abuse drugs can die or get addicted to them without realizing it. Temptation is hard to deny. People may think they are cool if they are into it but truth is, they are not. Instead, they can harm themselves. Using drugs is one of the huge problems in society. Meanwhile, schools are known as the center for the development of every learner and through education, prevention of this malady is expected with coordination with the community. This study then aimed to perform a counterbalancing act in molding a safe and well-informed decision making in a normative culture that can be used by all members of society, most especially the learners. In addition, it sought to promote a project that will showcase activities and trainings of Barkada Kontra Droga (BKD) in Natalia Velasquez Ramos Memorial Integrated School, District III-Alangilan in the Division of Batangas City, Batangas, Region IV-A CALABARZON which will contribute as model illustration to different schools to boost drug education, prevention and awareness and to sustain various services in the Barkadaadopted concepts by maximizing the drug abuse prevention advocacy given by the DepEd from various memorandum and orders. This research used the descriptive method of research with a researcher-made questionnaire as the main data gathering instrument and supplemented with an interview. Frequency, percentage, rank, and weighted mean were used as statistical tools in data analysis. Thirty selected junior and senior high school teachers served as the respondents of the study. Findings revealed that there were more activities needed to improve and to strengthen the awareness on drug addiction among learners and also increase community involvement to keep a fully drug-free atmosphere.

Proactive crash risk prediction modeling for merging assistance system at interchange merging areas

Objective: Ramp drivers have to merge into the through traffic in a limited time and space at interchange merging areas. Different merging decisions are made due to drivers’ various perception abilities of potential danger, which might significantly increase the crash risk. Driving assistance technology (DA) is expected to be an effective way of mitigating the crash risk. Hence, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by designing a model strategy to predict the crash risk of merging drivers in order to enhance the merging assistance system for crash avoidance.Methods: Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was used to collect individual vehicle data to conduct traffic analysis at the microscopic level. A model strategy was proposed to predict the crash risk of merging vehicles which could make sure that ramp drivers are aware of potential risks in advance. Three models (i.e., binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression, and nested logit models) were developed and compared.Results: Target-lane-related and merging-vehicle-related variables were found significant with crash risk, including the speed of the merging vehicle, the speed of lead/lag vehicle in the target lane, the type of lead/lag vehicle in the target lane. Different variables were found to be significant in the proposed models.Conclusions: The results suggest that the nested logit model has the highest prediction accuracy. It is concluded that the merging speed, driving ability (i.e., lane-keeping instability), and the vehicle type in the target lane affect the crash risk. Finally, the implementation of the proposed prediction model for merging assistance system is designed. The findings from this study can have implications for the design of the merging assistance system for helping drivers make safe merging decisions and thus enhancing the safety of the interchange merging area.

Hierarchical reinforcement learning for self‐driving decision‐making without reliance on labelled driving data

Decision making for self-driving cars is usually tackled by manually encoding rules from drivers' behaviors or imitating drivers' manipulation using supervised learning techniques. Both of them rely on mass driving data to cover all possible driving scenarios. This paper presents a hierarchical reinforcement learning method for decision making of self-driving cars, which does not depend on a large amount of labeled driving data. This method comprehensively considers both high-level maneuver selection and low-level motion control in both lateral and longitudinal directions. We firstly decompose the driving tasks into three maneuvers, including driving in lane, right lane change and left lane change, and learn the sub-policy for each maneuver. Then, a master policy is learned to choose the maneuver policy to be executed in the current state. All policies including master policy and maneuver policies are represented by fully-connected neural networks and trained by using asynchronous parallel reinforcement learners (APRL), which builds a mapping from the sensory outputs to driving decisions. Different state spaces and reward functions are designed for each maneuver. We apply this method to a highway driving scenario, which demonstrates that it can realize smooth and safe decision making for self-driving cars.

Dünyada ve Türkiye’de Tamamlayıcı Terapilere İlişkin Yasal Düzenlemelerde Hemşirelerin Yeri

Complementary therapies are the names given throughout the methods applied in parallel with modern medicine to gain the health of the individual. Interest in complementary therapies from the past to the present day and the frequency of use of these methods continues to increase. Increasing use of complementary therapies by the community and requiring patients to make appropriate and safe decisions in their own care requires that health care professionals have knowledge and skills in complementary therapies. In this context, nurses are expected to identify and develop their own practice of using complementary therapies, and to develop a strategy for these practices. Nurses integrating these practices into patient care and evaluating their outcomes ensure that the care provided to the patient is comprehensive and holistic. In order for these processes to take place, important policies must be established for nurses across the country. In the 1900s many countries developed politics and started to establish certificate programs and projects. Regarding national and international legislation, it is seen that legal regulations are not sufficient, especially for nurses. In this review, national and international legal arrangements for complementary therapies and the place of complementary therapies in nursing will be discussed.

Comparison of intelligent transportation systems based on biocybernetic vehicle control systems

Prompt thinking and quick reaction in complex dynamically changing traffic situations are determinant factors of road accidents. A key part of modern and promising intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) can be represented by VANET vehicular ad hoc network and its equivalents, whose nodes are represented by vehicles with installed special communication modules and new-generation intelligent on-board control systems. A concept of VANET network development is presented, which is based on biocybernetic systems of vehicle control and can serve as a starting point for building conceptually new ITSs and allow solving the primary ITS task at a totally new level, which lies in obtaining optimal prompt decisions (when driving a vehicle) in a short period of time, during which neither human no automated system can make a safe decision. We consider the architecture and basics of creating an intelligent on-board information-and-control module of a vehicle, based on the integration of a biocybernetic human-machine interface and elements of VANET vehicular ad hoc network. We also consider the basics of creating a bank of mathematical models as a central element of the intelligent on-board information-and-control module. Based on the analysis of completed experiments, we can conclude that the use of biocybernetic approaches based on sensor networks and corresponding applied vehicle control systems helps solving crucial traffic safety issues, namely: obtaining optimal prompt decisions (when driving a vehicle) in a short period of time, which significantly improves traffic safety and increases traffic intensity.