Investigating the individual and organisational predictors of work-related driving crash involvement in Ethiopia

The rate of road traffic injury and death in Ethiopia is at a critical level when compared to rates in high-income countries. Considering the enormity of this issue, research is to identify groups of high-risk road users and the factors contributing to their crash involvement. This study focuses on work-related drivers. This study explores driving behaviour as a mediator of the relationship between organisational and individual attribute factors and self-reported crashes in a sample of 213 work-related drivers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The hypothesised framework identifies driving behaviour as the most proximal determinant of self-reported crashes, and safety values, role overload and self-efficacy as antecedents of driving behaviour. With the exception of the relationship between self-efficacy and driving behaviour, all the hypothesised relationships were supported. We make recommendations for intervention approaches that are theoretically focused and sensitive to the cultural context.

Analysis of traffic injury severity in Dhaka, Bangladesh

This research identifies roadway, traffic, and environmental factors that influence the injury severity of road traffic crashes in Dhaka. Dhaka provides a rather unusual driving risk environment to study, since virtually anyone can obtain a drivers’ license and very little traffic enforcement and fines are given when drivers violate traffic rules. To examine this city with presumed heightened crash severity risk, police reported crash data from 2007 to 2011 containing about 2714 road traffic crashes were collected. The injury severity of traffic crashes—recorded as either fatal, serious injury, or property damage only—were modeled using an ordered Probit model. Significant factors increasing the probability of fatal injuries include crashes along highways (65%), absence of a road divider (80%), crashes during night time (54%), and vehicle-pedestrian collisions (367%); whereas two-way traffic configuration (21%), and traffic police controlled schemes (41%) decrease the probability of fatalities. Both similarities and differences of the findings between crash risk in Dhaka and developed countries are discussed in policy relevant terms.

“I drove after drinking alcohol” and other risky driving behaviours reported by young novice drivers in Queensland, Australia

Background. Volitional risky driving behaviours such as drink- and drug-driving (i.e. substance-impaired driving) and speeding contribute to the overrepresentation of young novice drivers in road crash fatalities, and crash risk is greatest during the first year of independent driving in particular. Aims. To explore the: 1) self-reported compliance of drivers with road rules regarding substance-impaired driving and other risky driving behaviours (e.g., speeding, driving while tired), one year after progression from a Learner to a Provisional (intermediate) licence; and 2) interrelationships between substance-impaired driving and other risky driving behaviours (e.g., crashes, offences, and Police avoidance). Methods. Drivers (n = 1,076; 319 males) aged 18-20 years were surveyed regarding their sociodemographics (age, gender) and self-reported driving behaviours including crashes, offences, Police avoidance, and driving intentions. Results. A relatively small proportion of participants reported driving after taking drugs (6.3% of males, 1.3% of females) and drinking alcohol (18.5% of males, 11.8% of females). In comparison, a considerable proportion of participants reported at least occasionally exceeding speed limits (86.7% of novices), and risky behaviours like driving when tired (83.6% of novices). Substance-impaired driving was associated with avoiding Police, speeding, risky driving intentions, and self-reported crashes and offences. Forty-three percent of respondents who drove after taking drugs also reported alcohol-impaired driving. Discussion and Conclusions. Behaviours of concern include drink driving, speeding, novice driving errors such as misjudging the speed of oncoming vehicles, violations of graduated driver licensing passenger restrictions, driving tired, driving faster if in a bad mood, and active punishment avoidance. Given the interrelationships between the risky driving behaviours, a deeper understanding of influential factors is required to inform targeted and general countermeasure implementation and evaluation during this critical driving period. Notwithstanding this, a combination of enforcement, education, and engineering efforts appear necessary to improve the road safety of the young novice driver, and for the drink-driving young novice driver in particular.

An outcome evaluation of the ‘Skipper’ designated driver program

The general aim of designated driver programs is to reduce the level of drink driving by encouraging potential drink drivers to travel with a driver who has abstained from (or at least limited) consuming alcohol. Designated driver programs appear to be quite widespread around the world, however a limited number have been subject to rigorous evaluation. This paper reports results from an outcome evaluation of a designated driver program called ‘Skipper’, which was trialled in a provincial city in Queensland, Australia. The outcome evaluation included surveys three weeks prior to (baseline), four months following (1st follow-up), and 16 months following (2nd follow-up) the commencement of the trial in both the ‘intervention area’ (baseline, n = 202; 1st follow-up, n = 211; 2nd follow-up, n = 200) and a ‘comparison area’(baseline, n = 203; 1st follow-up, n = 199; 2nd follow-up, n = 201); and a comparison of random breath testing and crash data before and after the trial. The survey results indicate that awareness of the program in the intervention area was quite high four months following its introduction and that this was maintained at 16 months. The results also suggest that the ‘Skipper’ program and the related publicity had positive impacts on behaviour with an increase in the proportion of people participating in designated driver as a passenger. It is less clear, however, whether the ‘Skipper’ program impacted on other behaviours of interest, such as drink driving or involvement in alcohol-related crashes. Suggestions for further research and program improvement are discussed as well as limitations of the research.

Using police crash databases for injury prevention research - a comparison of opt-out and opt-in approaches to study recruitment

Objective: The study aimed to examine the difference in response rates between opt-out and opt-in participant recruitment in a population-based study of heavy-vehicle drivers involved in a police-attended crash. Methods: Two approaches to subject recruitment were implemented in two different states over a 14-week period and response rates for the two approaches (opt-out versus opt-in recruitment) were compared. Results: Based on the eligible and contactable drivers, the response rates were 54% for the optout group and 16% for the opt-in group. Conclusions and Implications: The opt-in recruitment strategy (which was a consequence of one jurisdiction’s interpretation of the national Privacy Act at the time) resulted in an insufficient and potentially biased sample for the purposes of conducting research into risk factors for heavy-vehicle crashes. Australia’s national Privacy Act 1988 has had a long history of inconsistent practices by state and territory government departments and ethical review committees. These inconsistencies can have profound effects on the validity of research, as shown through the significantly different response rates we reported in this study. It is hoped that a more unified interpretation of the Privacy Act across the states and territories, as proposed under the soon-to-be released Australian Privacy Principles will reduce the recruitment challenges outlined in this study.

Automatic inference of driving task demand from visual cues of emotion and attention

Sensing the mental, physical and emotional demand of a driving task is of primary importance in road safety research and for effectively designing in-vehicle information systems (IVIS). Particularly, the need of cars capable of sensing and reacting to the emotional state of the driver has been repeatedly advocated in the literature. Algorithms and sensors to identify patterns of human behavior, such as gestures, speech, eye gaze and facial expression, are becoming available by using low cost hardware: This paper presents a new system which uses surrogate measures such as facial expression (emotion) and head pose and movements (intention) to infer task difficulty in a driving situation. 11 drivers were recruited and observed in a simulated driving task that involved several pre-programmed events aimed at eliciting emotive reactions, such as being stuck behind slower vehicles, intersections and roundabouts, and potentially dangerous situations. The resulting system, combining face expressions and head pose classification, is capable of recognizing dangerous events (such as crashes and near misses) and stressful situations (e.g. intersections and way giving) that occur during the simulated drive.

Advanced in-vehicle applications to mitigate driver aggression

Aggressive behavior at the steering wheel has been indicated as a contributing factor in a majority of crashes and anger has been compared to alcohol impairment in terms of probability to cause a crash. It has been shown that being in a state of anger or excitement while driving can decrease the drivers’ performances. . This paper reports the evaluation of 6 novel design alternatives of In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) aimed at mitigating driver aggression. Each application presented was designed to tackle the following contributing factors to driver aggression: competitiveness, anonymity, territoriality, stress as well as social and emotional isolation. The 6 applications were simulated using computer vision algorithm to automatically overlay the real traffic conditions with ‘Head-Up Display’ visualizations. Two applications emerged over the others from participant’s evaluation: shared music combined the known calming effect of music with the sense of sympathy and intimacy caused by hearing other drivers’ music. The Shared Snapshot application provided an immediate gratification and was evaluated as a potential prevention of roadside quarrels. The paper presents Theoretical foundation, participant’s evaluations, implications and limitations of the study.

Three social car visions to improve driver behaviour

The social cost of road injury and fatalities is still unacceptable. The driver is often mainly responsible for road crashes, therefore changing the driver behaviour is one of the most important and most challenging priority in road transport. This paper presents three innovative visions that articulate the potential of using Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication for supporting the exchange of social information amongst drivers. We argue that there could be tremendous benefits in socialising cars to influence human driving behaviours for the better and that this aspect is still relevant in the age of looming autonomous cars. Our visions provide theoretical grounding how V2V infrastructure and emerging human–machine interfaces (HMI) could persuade drivers to: (i) adopt better (e.g. greener) driving practices, (ii) reduce drivers aggressiveness towards pro-social driving behaviours, and (iii) reduce risk-taking behaviour in young, particularly male, adults. The visions present simple but powerful concepts that reveal ‘good’ aspects of the driver behaviour to other drivers and make them contagious. The use of self-efficacy, social norms, gamification theories and social cues could then increase the likelihood of a widespread adoption of such ‘good’ driving behaviours.

Organizational work-related road safety situational analysis: More than just an audit tool

Although safety statistics indicate that road crashes are the most common form of work-related fatalities, many organizations fail to treat company vehicles in the same manner as other physical safety hazards within the workplace. Traditionally, work-related road safety has targeted primarily driver-related issues and not adequately addressed organizational processes, such as the organizations’ safety system and risk management processes and practice. This inadequacy generally stems from a lack of specific contextual knowledge and basic requirements to improve work-related road safety, including the supporting systems to ensure any intervention strategy or initiative’s ongoing effectiveness. Therefore, informed by previous research and based on a case study methodology, the Organizational Work-Related Road Safety Situational Analysis was developed to assess organizations’ current work-related road safety system, including policy, procedures, processes and practice. The situational analysis tool is similar to a safety audit however is more comprehensive in detail, application and provides sufficient evidence to enable organizations to mitigate and manage their work-related road safety risks. In addition, data collected from this process assists organizations in making informed decisions regarding intervention strategy design, development, implementation and ongoing effectiveness. This paper reports on the effectiveness of the situational analysis tool to assess WRRS systems across five differing and diverse organizations; including gas exploration and mining, state government, local government, and not for profit/philanthropy. The outcomes of this project identified considerable differences in the degree by which the organizations’ addressed work-related road safety across their vehicle fleet operations and provides guidelines for improving organizations’ work-related road safety systems.

Evaluation of emerging intelligent transport systems to improve safety on level crossings : an overview

Safety at railway level crossings (RLX) is one part of a wider picture of safety within the whole transport system. Governments, the rail industry and road organisations have used a variety of countermeasures for many years to improve RLX safety. New types of interventions are required in order to reduce the number of crashes and associated social costs at railway crossings. This paper presents the results of a large research program which aimed to assess the effectiveness of emerging Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) interventions, both on-road and in-vehicle based, to improve the safety of car drivers at RLXs in Australia. The three most promising technologies selected from the literature review and focus groups were tested in an advanced driving simulator to provide a detailed assessment of their effects on driver behaviour. The three interventions were: (i) in-vehicle visual warning using a GPS/smartphone navigation-like system, (ii) in-vehicle audio warning and; (iii) on-road intervention known as valet system (warning lights on the road surface activated as a train approaches). The effects of these technologies on 57 participants were assessed in a systematic approach focusing on the safety of the intervention, effects on the road traffic around the crossings and driver’s acceptance of the technology. Given that the ITS interventions were likely to provide a benefit by improving the driver’s awareness of the crossing status in low visibility conditions, such conditions were investigated through curves in the track before arriving at the crossing. ITS interventions were also expected to improve driver behaviour at crossings with high traffic (blocking back issue), which were also investigated at active crossings. The key findings are: (i) interventions at passive crossings are likely to provide safety benefits; (ii) the benefits of ITS interventions on driver behaviour at active crossings are limited; (iii) the trialled ITS interventions did not show any issues in terms of driver distraction, driver acceptance or traffic delays; (iv) these interventions are easy to use, do not increase driver workload substantially; (v) participants’ intention to use the technology is high and; (vi) participants saw most value in succinct messages about approaching trains as opposed to knowing the RLX locations or the imminence of a collision with a train.

Modelling total duration of traffic incidents including incident detection and recovery time

Traffic incidents are key contributors to non-recurrent congestion, potentially generating significant delay. Factors that influence the duration of incidents are important to understand so that effective mitigation strategies can be implemented. To identify and quantify the effects of influential factors, a methodology for studying total incident duration based on historical data from an ‘integrated database’ is proposed. Incident duration models are developed using a selected freeway segment in the Southeast Queensland, Australia network. The models include incident detection and recovery time as components of incident duration. A hazard-based duration modelling approach is applied to model incident duration as a function of a variety of factors that influence traffic incident duration. Parametric accelerated failure time survival models are developed to capture heterogeneity as a function of explanatory variables, with both fixed and random parameters specifications. The analysis reveals that factors affecting incident duration include incident characteristics (severity, type, injury, medical requirements, etc.), infrastructure characteristics (roadway shoulder availability), time of day, and traffic characteristics. The results indicate that event type durations are uniquely different, thus requiring different responses to effectively clear them. Furthermore, the results highlight the presence of unobserved incident duration heterogeneity as captured by the random parameter models, suggesting that additional factors need to be considered in future modelling efforts.

Young driver distraction : state of the evidence and directions for behavior change programs

Adolescent drivers are over-represented in distraction-related motor vehicle crashes. There are a number of potential reasons for such elevated risk with driving inexperience, high adoption of communication technology, increased peer involvement and tendency to take risks, rendering young drivers particularly vulnerable. Major legislative efforts in Graduated Licensing Systems that include passenger restrictions have shown positive effects. Restrictions on cell phone use are also being introduced however enforcement of such regulations is challenging. This paper argues that such contextual, legislative interventions are an essential prevention strategy however there is an unfilled need to introduce behavior change programs that may target adolescents, parents and friends. A theoretical framework is applied in which risk and protective factors are identified from research within community and jurisdiction contexts. In the literature on distraction social context and normative influences are the key elements used to inform program design for adolescent drivers with parental monitoring informing interventions targeting parents. Following from this assessment of the message content assessment, the design of strategies to deliver the messages are reviewed. In the current literature, school-based programs, simulations and web-delivered programs have been evaluated with supplementary strategies delivered by physicians and parents. Such developments are still at an early stage of development and ultimately will need controlled implementation and evaluation studies. There is of course, no likely single approach to prevent adolescent driver distraction and complementary approaches such as the further development of technological interventions to manage phone use are needed. Implications and Contributions The paper describes the intervention design process alongside key research in young driver distraction including selecting target behavior, audience, theoretically-derived strategies and delivery strategies. Currently graduated driver licensing and technology use and acceptance and parent-adolescent and adolescent-peer interactions are opportunities for further research and exploration.

A review of international speed enforcement policies and practices : evidence-based recommendations for best practice

Extensive research has highlighted the positive and exponential relationship between vehicle speed and crash risk and severity. Speed enforcement policies and practices throughout the world have developed dramatically as new technology becomes available, however speeding remains a pervasive problem internationally that significantly contributes to road trauma. This paper adopted a three-pronged approach to review speed enforcement policies and practices by: (i) describing and comparing policies and practices adopted in a cross-section of international jurisdictions; (ii) reviewing the available empirical evidence evaluating the effectiveness of various approaches, and; (iii) providing recommendations for the optimisation speed enforcement. The review shows the enforcement strategies adopted in various countries differ both in terms of the approaches used and how they are specifically applied. The literature review suggests strong and consistent evidence that police speed enforcement, in particular speed cameras, can be an effective tool for reducing vehicle speeds and subsequent traffic crashes. Drawing from this evidence, recommendations for best practice are proposed, including the specific instances in which various speed enforcement approaches typically produce the greatest road safety benefits, and perhaps most importantly, that speed enforcement programs must utilise a variety of strategies tailored to specific situations, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Data mining the relationship between road crash and skid resistance

Road asset managers are seeking analysis of the whole road network to supplement statistical analyses of small subsets of homogeneous roadway. This study outlines the use of data mining capable of analyzing the wide range of situations found on the network, with a focus on the role of skid resistance in the cause of crashes. Results from the analyses show that on non-crash-prone roads with low crash rates, skid resistance contributes only in a minor way, whereas on high-crash roadways, skid resistance often contributes significantly in the calculation of the crash rate. The results provide evidence supporting a causal relationship between skid resistance and crashes and highlight the importance of the role of skid resistance in decision making in road asset management.

AR and gamification concepts to reduce driver boredom and risk taking behaviours

Young males are over-represented in road crashes. Part of the problem is their proneness to boredom, a hardwired personality factor that can lead to risky driving. This paper presents a theoretical understanding of boredom in the driving context and demonstrates convincing arguments to investigate the role of boredom further. Specifically, this paper calls for the design of innovative technologies and applications that make safe driving more pleasurable and stimulating for young males, e.g., by applying gamification techniques. We propose two design concepts through the following questions: A. Can the simulation of risky driving reduce actual risky driving? B. Can the replacement of risky driving stimuli with alternative stimuli reduce risky driving? We argue that considering these questions in the future design of automotive user-interfaces and personal ubiquitous computing devices could effectively reduce risky driving behaviours among young males.