Effects of Mobile Phone Distraction at the Onset of Amber Light: Analysis of Driving Simulator Data

Distraction whilst driving on an approach to a signalized intersection is particularly dangerous, as potential vehicular conflicts and resulting angle collisions tend to be severe. This study examines the decisions of distracted drivers during the onset of amber lights. Driving simulator data were obtained from a sample of 58 drivers under baseline and handheld mobile phone conditions at the University of IOWA - National Advanced Driving Simulator. Explanatory variables include age, gender, cell phone use, distance to stop-line, and speed. An iterative combination of decision tree and logistic regression analyses are employed to identify main effects, non-linearities, and interactions effects. Results show that novice (16-17 years) and younger (18-25 years) drivers’ had heightened amber light running risk while distracted by cell phone, and speed and distance thresholds yielded significant interaction effects. Driver experience captured by age has a multiplicative effect with distraction, making the combined effect of being inexperienced and distracted particularly risky. Solutions are needed to combat the use of mobile phones whilst driving.

Using BIM for smarter and safer scaffolding and formwork construction: a preliminary methodology

The goal of this research project is to develop specific BIM objects for temporary construction activities which are fully integrated with object design, construction efficiency and safety parameters. Specifically, the project will deliver modularised electronic scaffolding and formwork objects that will allow designers to easily incorporate them into BIM models to facilitate smarter and safer infrastructure and building construction. This research first identified there is currently a distinct lack of BIM objects for temporary construction works resulting in productivity loss during design and construction, and opportunities for improved consideration of safety standards and practices with the design of scaffolding and formwork. This is particularly relevant in Australia, given the “harmonisation” of OHS legislation across all states and territories from 1 January 2012, meaning that enhancements to Queensland practices will have direct application across Australia. Thus, in conjunction with government and industry partners in Queensland, Australia, the research team developed a strategic three-phase research methodology: (1) the preliminary review phase on industrial scaffolding and formwork practices and BIM implementation; (2) the BIM object development phase with specific safety and productivity functions; and (3) the Queensland-wide workshop phase for product dissemination and training. This paper discusses background review findings, details of the developed methodology, and expected research outcomes and their contributions to the Australian construction industry.

Officers' perspectives of policing alcohol-related incidents in and around licensed premises

Alcohol-related harms are disproportionately represented in licensed-premises. This study aimed to investigate the practices and perceived capabilities of a group of police officers who engage in policing activities in and around licensed premises in a capital city policing district in an Australian jurisdiction. Analysis of the self-reported data revealed that the 254 participants were much more likely to attend to alcohol-related incidents outside rather than inside licensed premises. Policing licensed premises that involved an alcohol-related event was perceived as the most difficult task compared to other forms of police activities, which was mirrored by low levels of perceived knowledge regarding effective intervention strategies to deal with incidents inside licensed premises. The findings have direct implication in regards to training police officers, particularly increasing their perceived knowledge and skill level to deal with incidents inside licensed premises.

Drivers’ inability to assess their level of alertness on monotonous highways

Decline of alertness constitutes a normal physiological phenomenon but could be aggravated when drivers operate in monotonous environments, even in rested individuals. Driving performance is impaired and this increases crash risk due to inattention. This paper aims to show that road characteristics - namely road design (road geometry) and road side variability (signage and buildings) – influence subjective assessment of alertness by drivers. This study used a driving simulator to investigate the drivers’ ability to subjectively detect periods of time when their alertness is importantly reduced by varying road geometry and road environment. Driver’s EEG activity is recorded as a reference to evaluate objectively driver's alertness and is compared to self-reported alertness by participants. Twenty-five participants drove on four different scenarios (varying road design and road environment monotony) for forty minutes. It was observed that participants were significantly more accurate in their assessment before the driving task as compared to after (90% versus 60%). Errors in assessment were largely underestimations of their real alertness rather than over-estimations. The ability to detect low alertness as assessed with an EEG was highly dependent on the road monotony. Scenarios with low roadside variability resulted in high overestimation of the real alertness, which was not observed on monotonous road design. The findings have consequences for road safety and suggest that countermeasures to lapses of alertness cannot rely solely on self-assessment from drivers and road design should reduce environments with low variability.

The relationship between cognitive ability, insight and self-regulatory behaviors: Findings from the older driver population

Self-regulation is often promoted as a coping strategy that may allow older drivers to drive safely for longer. Self-regulation depends upon drivers making an accurate assessment of their own ability and having a willingness to practice self-regulatory behaviors to compensate for changes in ability. The current study explored the relationship between older drivers’ cognitive ability, their driving confidence and their use of self-regulation. An additional study aim was to explore the relationship between these factors and older drivers’ interest in driving programs. Seventy Australian drivers aged 65 years and over completed a questionnaire about their driving and a brief screening measure of cognitive ability (an untimed Clock Drawing Test). While all participants reported high levels of confidence regarding their driving ability, and agreed that they would continue driving in the foreseeable future, a notable proportion performed poorly on the Clock Drawing Test. Compared to older drivers who successfully completed the Clock Drawing Test, those who failed the cognitive test were significantly less likely to report driving self-regulation, and showed significantly less interest in being involved in driving programs. Older drivers with declining cognitive abilities may not be self-regulating their driving. This group also appears to be unlikely to self-refer to driving programs.

Empirical IEEE 802.11p performance evaluation on test tracks

IEEE 802.11p is the new standard for inter-vehicular communications (IVC) using the 5.9 GHz frequency band; it is planned to be widely deployed to enable cooperative systems. 802.11p uses and performance have been studied theoretically and in simulations over the past years. Unfortunately, many of these results have not been confirmed by on-tracks experimentation. In this paper, we describe field trials of 802.11p technology with our test vehicles. Metrics such as maximum range, latency and frame loss are examined.

Towards local cultures of sustainability : facilitating community created environment education centres through design

Ecological sustainability has been proposed to address the problem of human impacts increasingly degrading planetary resources and ecosystems, threatening biodiversity, eco-services and human survival. Ecological sustainability is an imperative, with Australia having one of the highest eco-footprints per person worldwide. While significant progress has been made via implementation of ecologically sustainable design in urban communities, relatively little has been undertaken in small, disparate regional communities in Australia. Regional communities are disadvantaged by rural economic decline associated with structural change and inequities of resource transfer. The ecologically sustainable solution is holistic, so all settlements need to be globally wise, richly biodiverse yet locally specific. As a regional solution to this global problem, this research offers the practical means by which a small regional community can contribute. It focuses on the design and implementation of a community centre and the fostering of transformative community learning through an integrated ‘learning community’ awareness of ecologically sustainable best practice. Lessons learned are documented by the participant researcher who as a designer, facilitator, local resident and social narrator has been deeply connected with the Tweed-Caldera region over a period since 1980. The collective action of the local community of Chillingham has been diligently recorded over a decade of design and development. Over this period, several positive elements emerged in terms of improvements to the natural and built environment, greater social cohesion and co-operative learning along with a shift towards a greener local economy. Behavioural changes in the community were noted as residents strived to embrace ecological ideals and reduce fossil fuel dependency. They found attractive local solutions to sourcing of food and using local employment opportunities to up skill their residents via transformative learning as a community in transition. Finally, the catalytic impact of external partnering has also been documented. How well the region as a whole has achieved its ecologically sustainable objectives is measured in terms of the delivered success of private and public partnering with the community, the creation of a community centre cum environment education centre, the restoration of local heritage buildings, the repair of riparian forests and improved water conditions in local river systems, better roads and road safety, local skills and knowledge transfer, support of local food and local/regional growers markets to attract tourists via the integrated trails network. In aggregate, each and every element contributes to a measure of eco-positive development for the built environment, its social organisation and its economy that has guided the local community to find its own pathway to sustainability. Within the Tweed-Caldera bioregion in northern New South Wales, there has been a lack of strategic planning, ecologically sustainable knowledge and facilities in isolated communities that could support the development of a local sustained green economy, provide a hub for socio-cultural activities and ecology based education. The first challenge in this research was to model a whole systems approach to eco-positive development in Chillingham, NSW, a small community where Nature and humanity know no specific boundary. The net result was the creation of a community environment education centre featuring best-affordable ecological practice and regionally distinctive, educational building form from a disused heritage building (cow bale). This development, implemented over a decade, resonated with the later regional wide programs that were linked in the Caldera region by the common purpose of extending the reach of local and state government assistance to regional NSW in economic transition coupled with sustainability. The lessons learned from these linked projects reveal that subsequent programs have been significantly easier to initiate, manage, develop and deliver results. In particular, pursuing collaborative networks with all levels of government and external private partners has been economically effective. Each community’s uniqueness has been celebrated and through drawing out these distinctions, has highlighted local vision, strategic planning, sense of belonging and connection of people with place. This step has significantly reduced the level of friction between communities that comes from natural competition for the finite pool of funds. Following the pilot Tweed-Caldera study, several other NSW regional communities are now undertaking a Community Economic Transition Program based on the processes, trials and positive experiences witnessed in the Tweed-Caldera region where it has been demonstrated that regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan and implement effective long term strategies for sustainability, empowering communities to participate in eco-governance. This thesis includes the design and development of a framework for community created environment education centres to provide an equal access place for community to participate to meet their essential needs locally. An environment centre that facilitates community transition based on easily accessible environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. This research draws upon the literatures of ecologically sustainable development, environmental education and community development in the context of regional community transition towards ‘strong sustainability’. The research approach adapted is best described as a four stage collaborative action research cycle where the participant researcher (me) has a significant involvement in the process to foster local cultures of sustainability by empowering its citizens to act locally and in doing so, become more self reliant and socially resilient. This research also draws upon the many fine working exemplars, such as the resilience of the Cuban people, the transition town initiative in Totnes, U.K. and the models of Australian Community Gardens, such as CERES (Melbourne) and Northey Street (Brisbane). The objectives of this study are to research and evaluate exemplars of ecologically sustainable environment education centres, to facilitate the design and development of an environment education centre created by a small regional community as an ecologically sustainable learning environment; to facilitate a framework for community transition based on environmental education, skills and infrastructure necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. The research was undertaken as action research in the Tweed Caldera in Northern NSW. This involved the author as participant researcher, designer and volunteer in two interconnected initiatives: the Chillingham Community Centre development and the Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP). Both initiatives involved a series of design-led participatory community workshops that were externally facilitated with the support of government agency partnerships, steering committees and local volunteers. Together the Caldera research programs involved communities participating in developing their own strategic planning process and outcomes. The Chillingham Community Centre was developed as a sustainable community centre/hub using a participatory design process. The Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP) prioritised Caldera region projects: the Caldera farmer’s market; community gardens and community kitchens; community renewable energy systems and an integrated trails network. The significant findings were: the CETP projects were capable of moving towards an eco-positive design benchmark through transformative learning. Community transition to sustainability programs need to be underpinned by sustainability and environmental education based frameworks and practical on ground experience in local needs based projects through transformative learning. The actioned projects were successfully undertaken through community participation and teamwork. Ecological footprint surveys were undertaken to guide and assess the ongoing community transition process, however the paucity of responses needs to be revisited. The concept of ecologically sustainable development has been adopted internationally, however existing design and planning strategies do not assure future generations continued access to healthy natural life support systems. Sustainable design research has usually been urban focussed, with little attention paid to regional communities. This study seeks to redress this paucity through the design of ecologically sustainable (deep green) learning environments for small regional communities. Through a design-led process of environmental education, this study investigates how regional communities can be facilitated to model the principles of eco-positive development to support transition to local cultures of sustainability. This research shows how community transition processes and projects can incorporate sustainable community development as transformative learning through design. Regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan long term strategies for sustainability, empowering people to participate in eco-governance. A framework is developed for a community created environment education centre to provide an equal access place for the local community to participate in implementing ways to meet their essential needs locally. A community environment education centre that facilitates community transition based on holistic environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability.

Quantity of documentation of maltreatment risk factors in injury-related paediatric hospitalisations

Background While child maltreatment is recognised as a global problem, solid epidemiological data on the prevalence of child maltreatment and risk factors associated with child maltreatment is lacking in Australia and internationally. There have been recent calls for action to improve the evidence-base capturing and describing child abuse, particularly those data captured within the health sector. This paper describes the quantity of documentation of maltreatment risk factors in injury-related paediatric hospitalisations in Queensland, Australia. Methods This study involved a retrospective medical record review, text extraction and coding methodology to assess the quantity of documentation of risk factors and the subsequent utility of data in hospital records for describing child maltreatment and data linkage to Child Protection Service (CPS). Results There were 433 children in the maltreatment group and 462 in the unintentional injury group for whom medical records could be reviewed. Almost 93% of the any maltreatment code sample, but only 11% of the unintentional injury sample had documentation identified indicating the presence of any of 20 risk factors. In the maltreatment group the most commonly documented risk factor was history of abuse (41%). In those with an unintentional injury, the most commonly documented risk factor was alcohol abuse of the child or family (3%). More than 93% of the maltreatment sample also linked to a child protection record. Of concern are the 16% of those children who linked to child protection who did not have documented risk factors in the medical record. Conclusion Given the importance of the medical record as a source of information about children presenting to hospital for treatment and as a potential source of evidence for legal action the lack of documentation is of concern. The details surrounding the injury admission and consideration of any maltreatment related risk factors, both identifying their presence and ruling them out are required for each and every case. This highlights the need for additional training for clinicians to understand the importance of their documentation in child injury cases.

Exploring perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement

The purpose of traffic law enforcement is to encourage compliant driver behaviour. That is, the threat of an undesirable sanction encourages drivers to comply with traffic laws. However, not all traffic law violations are considered equal. For example, while drink driving is generally seen as socially unacceptable, behaviours such as speeding are arguably less so, and speed enforcement is often portrayed in the popular media as a means of “revenue raising”. The perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement has received limited research attention to date. Perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement may influence (or be influenced by) attitudes toward illegal driving behaviours, and both of these factors are likely to influence on-road driving behaviour. This study aimed to explore attitudes toward a number of illegal driving behaviours and traffic law enforcement approaches that typically target these behaviours using self-reported data from a large sample of drivers. The results of this research can be used to inform further research in this area, as well as the content of public education and advertising campaigns designed to influence attitudes toward illegal driving behaviours and perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement.

Too sleepy to drive : self-perception and regulation of driving when sleepy

Background: Sleepiness is a direct contributor to a substantial proportion of fatal and severe road cashes. A number of technological solutions designed to detect sleepiness have been developed, but self-awareness of increasing sleepiness remains a critical component in on-road strategies for mitigating this risk. In order to take appropriate action when sleepy, drivers’ perceptions of their level of sleepiness must be accurate. Aims: This study aimed to assess capacity to accurately identify sleepiness and self-regulate driving cessation during a validated driving simulator task. Participants: Participants comprised 26 young adult drivers (20-28 years). The drivers had open licenses but no other exclusion criteria where used. Methods: Participants woke at 5am, and took part in a laboratory-based hazard perception driving simulation, either at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Established physiological measures (including EEG) and subjective measures (sleepiness ratings) previously found sensitive to changes in sleepiness levels were utilised. Participants were instructed to ‘drive’ until they believed that sleepiness had impaired their ability to drive safely. They were then offered a nap opportunity. Results: The mean duration of the drive before cessation was 39 minutes (±18 minutes). Almost all (23/26) of the participants then achieved sleep during the nap opportunity. These data suggest that the participants’ perceptions of sleepiness were specific. However, EEG data from a number of participants suggested very high levels of sleepiness prior to driving cessation, suggesting poor sensitivity. Conclusions: Participants reported high levels of sleepiness while driving after very moderate sleep restriction. They were able to identify increasing sleepiness during the test period, could decide to cease driving and in most cases were sufficiently sleepy to achieve sleep during the daytime session. However, the levels of sleepiness achieved prior to driving cessation suggest poor accuracy in self-perception and regulation. This presents practical issues for the implementation of fatigue and sleep-related strategies to improve driver safety.

The social car : new interactive vehicular applications derived from social media and urban informatics

Digital information that is place- and time-specific, is increasingly becoming available on all aspects of the urban landscape. People (cf. the Social Web), places (cf. the Geo Web), and physical objects (cf. ubiquitous computing, the Internet of Things) are increasingly infused with sensors, actuators, and tagged with a wealth of digital information. Urban informatics research explores these emerging digital layers of the city at the intersection of people, place and technology. However, little is known about the challenges and new opportunities that these digital layers may offer to road users driving through today’s mega cities. We argue that this aspect is worth exploring in particular with regards to Auto-UI’s overarching goal of making cars both safer and more enjoyable. This paper presents the findings of a pilot study, which included 14 urban informatics research experts participating in a guided ideation (idea creation) workshop within a simulated environment. They were immersed into different driving scenarios to imagine novel urban informatics type of applications specific to the driving context.

Neuromuscular imbalances in the track sprinter

Athletic coaching can involve observation of a motor control task and then proposing guidance to an athlete about how the task performance can be developed. Coaches can identify the technique elements that seem to hinder performance and then provide instruction. Recently, a variety of training methods were proposed to enhance sprint performance, however a number of authors have identified these methods as characterised by low scientific evaluation or support (Brown & Vescovi, 2012; Jones, Bezodis, & Thompson, 2009). This article will outline a scientifically robust neuromuscular theory underlying poor movement techniques that may be visible when coaches observe sprint performance. The goal of this article is to inform the sprint coach of a method to identify and correct suboptimal biomechanics to enhance athletic performance.