Traffic psychology - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Traffic psychology is a young, expanding and wide field in psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

. Whereas traffic
Traffic
Traffic on roads may consist of pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using the public way for purposes of travel...

psychology is primarily related to the study of the behavior of road users and the psychological processes underlying that behavior (Rothengatter, 1997, 223) as well as to the relationship between behavior

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

and accidents, transport
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...

ation psychology, sometimes referred to as mobility psychology, focuses on mobility issues, individual and social factors in the movement of people and goods, and travel
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...

demand management (TDM).

There is no single theoretical framework in traffic psychology, but, instead, many specific models explaining, for example, the perceptual, attentional, cognitive, social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

, motivational and emotional determinants of mobility and traffic behaviour. One of the most prominent behavioral models divides the various tasks involved in traffic participation into three hierarchical levels, i.e. the strategic, the tactical and the operational level. The model demonstrates the diversity of decision and control tasks which have to be accomplished when driving a vehicle. However, until now, most of the psychological models have had a rather heuristic nature, e.g. risk theories such as the risk compensation

Risk compensation

In ethology, risk compensation is an effect whereby individual people may tend to adjust their behavior in response to perceived changes in risk. It is seen as self-evident that individuals will tend to behave in a more cautious manner if their perception of risk or danger increases...

hypothesis, Fuller's task capability model, and thus are not sufficiently precise to allow for concrete behavioral prediction and control. This is partly due to the importance of individual differences, a major topic of psychology which has not yet been sufficiently accounted for in traffic and transportation. On the other hand, social and psychological attitude/behavior models, such as Ajzen's theory of planned behavior

Theory of planned behavior

In psychology, the theory of planned behavior is a theory about the link between attitudes and behavior. It was proposed by Icek Ajzen as an extension of the theory of reasoned action. It is one of the most predictive persuasion theories...

, have been helpful in identifying determinants of mobility decisions.

Bringing together the scientific and practical lines, six areas of traffic and transportation psychology can be distinguished (Schlag, 1999):

Behavior and accident research

This is particularly in relation to different groups of road users (age groups, modes of transport), but also in relation to road design and motor vehicles. Explaining and predicting road user behavior depends on the development of valid and reliable models about the role of human factors in mobility behavior, and, especially, driver performance. Psychological traffic accident and behavior research deals with matters such as:

analysis of the driving task, changing conceptually from a traditionally rather sensory-motor task to a task with high monitoring impact,
perception, cognition and attentiveness when driving, driver information processing and expectations,
the driver's state, workload, alertness and fatigue,
driver personality, risk-taking, attitude
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...

s, motives for driving, excitedness and emotion,
interactions and the social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

of driving,
the relationship between the personal and environmental background of behavior, overt behavior, emerging conflicts and accidents,
work on risk compensation
Risk compensation
In ethology, risk compensation is an effect whereby individual people may tend to adjust their behavior in response to perceived changes in risk. It is seen as self-evident that individuals will tend to behave in a more cautious manner if their perception of risk or danger increases...

theory.

Accident prevention and improvement of traffic safety

This comprises education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

and information, above all following the “4 Es”: enforcement, education, engineering, encouragement/economy. The main goal is promoting safety by influencing and modifying behavior using legal, educational, vehicle- and road-specific measures; driver training, driving-instructor education, information on traffic issues, campaign design and marketing, effective enforcement.

Research and counselling in questions of mobility, transport economy and engineering

The main objective is user-oriented supply and design in as practical a form as possible. This includes differentiation between transportation needs of special groups (the elderly, the handicapped, young people, etc.). The main topics are

mobility needs and travel demands, choice of means of transport,
travel behavior research, above all activity-based approaches,
altering mobility behavior and modal split, problems of habituation and resistance to change, car dependence,
design and acceptance of travel demand management, above all of road pricing
Road pricing
Road pricing is an economic concept regarding the various direct charges applied for the use of roads. The road charges includes fuel taxes, licence fees, parking taxes, tolls, and congestion charges, including those which may vary by time of day, by the specific road, or by the specific vehicle...

measures (Schade & Schlag, 2003),
psychological aspects in road design and traffic environment,
quality management, especially quality of service, usability and well-being.

Vehicle construction and design

Psychology in car manufacturing traditionally deals with questions of ergonomics, but since the 1980s new in-car devices and related new infrastructure have emerged as a rapidly growing field. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or ADAS, are systems to help the driver in its driving process. When designed with a safe Human-Machine Interface it should increase car safety and more generally road safety.Examples of such a system are:...

(ADAS) and new information systems are designed to support the driver in an appropriate, user-oriented way. Based on analyses of driving tasks which drivers have to cope with, e.g. multiple tasks requiring divided attention, psychologists’ primary orientation in the design process is towards human needs. This involves defining the technical requirements, human-centred development and usability of ADAS

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

, the operability of Human-Machine Interface

Human-machine interface

Human-machine interface is the part of the machine that handles the Human-machine interaction- Overview :In complex systems, the human-machine interface is typically computerized. The term Human-computer interface refers to this kind of systems....

s (HMI), behavioral adaptation and risk compensation, acceptance of innovations, and social impacts.

Psychological assessment and counselling / rehabilitation

This kind of assessment and counselling is for drivers who display irregular behavior. It involves driver assessment, training and rehabilitation, above all for drivers with offences (driving while intoxicated, severe offences against traffic laws), aptitude assessment for driving, selection and training for professional drivers.

Rail and flight psychology

Some of the fields mentioned above not only apply to road traffic but also to rail and air transport. Nevertheless, in some ways, rail and flight psychology have historically developed separately from traffic psychology, which is dominantly road-related. One major new direction in rail and flight psychology is the shift in focus from the perspective of the professional operator (selection and training) to that of the customer (quality of service, usability).

Approach

From its very beginning, in research and practice, traffic psychology has followed an interdisciplinary approach and has shared common topics with other fields, in particular medicine (e.g. related to driving aptitude), engineering (ergonomics of cars as well as human factors in traffic planning), and economics (e.g. travel demand management). People as road users are seen as the core of an interactive traffic system also comprising transportation means, routes, traffic environment and regulation. Thus, mobility, including its positive as well as detrimental impacts, originates in people’s desires, decisions and behavior – and these might be influenced. The main accident causes are human errors and maladaptive behavior, accounting alone or in interaction with roadway or vehicle-related causes for more than 90% of all traffic accidents. Recognizing the possible impact of psychology in studying and solving transport problems, traffic and transportation psychology has emerged rapidly since the 1980s.

Congresses

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.