Citation

Atalar D, Thomas PD, Hill J. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2010; 15: 1166-1176.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Understanding specific traffic accident groups allows researchers and policy makers to develop solutions to failure sequences that commonly occur in the traffic environment. Functional failures are road user errors of perception, interpretation, planning or actioning and previous studies have identified factors that commonly occur within select accident groups but analysis has not been detailed due to limitations of the data. The role that perception plays in a driver's actions is one of the most important aspects of traffic behavior. Failures during visual processing at the perceptive stage of driving can increase the probability that a crash will occur. Previous experimental studies have identified perceptive failures as a common factor in accident causation but until recently real-world accident data has not been sufficiently detailed for validation. New in-depth data from the UK On The Spot (OTS) project is now available to support the evaluation of these failures under real-world conditions The aims of this study were to determine the causal factors that most commonly occur with functional failures during the perceptive stage of driving. This study incorporated a factorial analysis research design. Cases with Perceptive stage failures that resulted in an accident were analyzed. These failures were classified as" Distraction" (538 cases), "Failure to look" (779 cases), "Looked but did not see" (706 cases) and "Inattention" (1659 cases). Descriptive statistics were used to identify significant factors related to the accident environment, vehicle and road user state for each accident group. Principle Component Analysis was used to identify patterns of factors for each main failure type. Seventeen scenarios were identified using this statistical methodology and are discussed.


Keywords: Driver distraction;