After several decades of research, practice, intervention, and instruction, traffic psychology is in need of a summary work outlining the main trends in the discipline. Traffic Psychology Today provides a theoretical basis of the topic, a summary of the acquired research in the field, practical applications for government planners, and a critical discussion of future trends. Through a series of chapters contributed by an international group of researchers under the general editorship of Pierre Barjonet, Traffic Psychology Today comprehensively synthesizes thinking in the psychology of traffic from its inception in the mid 1950s through the present day.

Just as our transport systems become more and more important to our economic and social well-being, so they become more and more crowded and more at risk from congestion, disruption, and collapse. Technology and engineering can provide part of the solution, but the complete solution will need to take account of the behaviour of the users of the transport networks. The role of psychologists in this is to understand how people make decisions about the alternative modes of transport and about the alternative routes to their destinations, to understand how novice and other vulnerable users can develop safe and effective behaviours, how competent users can operate within the transport system optimally and within their perceptual and cognitive limitations. The contributions to this volume address these issues of how the use of our transport systems can be improved by taking into account knowledge of the behaviour of the people who use the systems. Topics discussed include driver training and licensing, driver impairment, road user attitudes and behaviour, enforcement and behaviour change, driver support systems, and the psychology of mobility and transport mode choice. This work will be of value not only to psychologists but to all transport professionals interested in the application of psychology to traffic.

Human error is involved in more than 90 percent of traffic accidents, and of those accidents, most are associated with visual distractions, or looking-but-failing-to-see errors. Human Factors of Visual and Cognitive Performance in Driving gathers knowledge from a human factors psychology standpoint and provides deeper insight into traffic -user beh

Many books focus on individual differences and how those relate to traffic safety such as accident proneness, gender differences, age, alcohol, and the effects of drugs. Others focus on the safety effects regarding the vehicle such as airbags, anti-lock brakes, navigation systems, intelligent cruise control and other new gadgets coming to the vehicle. Even though these topics are undoubtedly important for traffic safety, this book takes a unique approach as it focuses solely on the road environment. Designing Safe Road Systems provides the background for those who want to know more about the effects of road design on driving behaviour. It uses a systems approach to allow a better understanding of why and in what circumstances drivers may commit errors. This understanding will ultimately lead to road systems that prevent (fatal) errors from occurring. The book contains an overview of the current models and theories about human performance and human behaviour in traffic that are relevant for all those involved in designing safe road systems. The central theme of this book is how design principles can reduce the probability of an error while driving. The authors demonstrate how knowledge of human factors helps a road authority to better understand how road users behave. They argue that in many cases the design of the environment can be further adjusted to human capabilities, and that safety should be considered a system property to be built into the road system.

This book considers how driver training needs to be adapted in order to raise awareness of how human factors contribute to unsafe driving behaviour. It promotes the development of driver education that considers all the skills that are essential for road safety.

This book presents a general overview of the various factors that contribute to modelling human behaviour in automotive environments. This long-awaited volume, written by world experts in the field, presents state-of-the-art research and case studies. It will be invaluable reading for professional practitioners graduate students, researchers and alike.

Thanks to advances in computer technology in the last twenty years, navigation system, cabin environment control, ACC, advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) and automated driving have become a part of the automobile experience. Improvement in technology enables us to design these with greater flexibility and provide greater value to the driver (human centered design). To achieve this, research is required by laboratories, automobile and auto parts manufacturers. Although there has been a lot of effort in human factors research and development, starting from basic research to product development, the knowledge and experience has not been integrated optimally. The aim of this book is to collect and review the information for researchers, designers and developers to learn and apply them for further research and development of human centered design of future automotive technologies. Automotive human factors include psychological, physiological, mathematical, engineering and even sociological aspects. This book offers valuable insights to applying the right approach in the right place.

Driver inattention has been identified as one of the leading causes for car accidents. The problem of distraction while driving is likely to worsen, partly due to increasingly complex in-car technologies. However, intelligent transport systems are being developed to assist drivers and to ensure a safe road environment. One approach to the design of ergonomic automobile systems is to integrate our understanding of the human information processing systems into the design process. This book aims to further the design of ergonomic multisensory interfaces using research from the fast-growing field of cognitive neuroscience. It focuses on two aspects of driver information-processing in particular: multisensory interactions and the spatial distribution of attention in driving. The Multisensory Driver provides interface design guidelines together with a detailed review of current cognitive neuroscience and behavioural research in multisensory human perception, which will help the development of ergonomic interfaces. The discussion on spatial attention is particularly relevant for car interface designers, but it will also appeal to cognitive psychologists interested in spatial attention and the applications of these theoretical research findings. Giving a detailed description of a cohesive series of psychophysical experiments on multisensory warning signals, conducted in both laboratory and simulator settings, this book provides an approach for those in the engineering discipline who wish to test their systems with human observers.

Today’s society must confront major land transport problems. The human and financial costs of vehicle accidents are increasing, with road traffic accidents predicted to become the third largest cause of death and injury across the world by 2020. Several social trends pose threats to safety, including increasing car ownership and traffic congestion, the increased complexity of the human-vehicle interface, the ageing of populations in the developed world, and a possible influx of young vehicle operators in the developing world. The Human Factors in Road and Rail Transport series aims to make a timely contribution to these issues by focusing on the driver as a contributing causal agent in road and rail accidents. The series seeks to reflect the increasing demand for safe, efficient and economical land-based transport by reporting on the state-of-the-art science that may be applied to reduce vehicle collisions, improve the usability of vehicles and enhance the operator’s wellbeing and satisfaction. It will do so by disseminating new theoretical and empirical research from specialists in the behavioural and allied disciplines, including traffic psychology, human factors and ergonomics. The series captures topics such as driver behaviour, driver training, in-vehicle technology, driver health and driver assessment. Specially commissioned works from internationally recognised experts in the field will provide authoritative accounts of the leading approaches to this significant real-world problem.