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Road
User Perspective has worked to improve road safety in a number of scenarios and locations around the UK.
Responder Emergency Lighting
Optimum flash patters for emergency service vehicles
Project Overview
This project for HOSDB was concerned with reducing the hazardousnes of emergency service driving by improving emergency vehicle lighting. User Perspective was tasked to design experimental trials identifying the optimal flash characteristics for roof-mounted emergency lighting.
A pilot experiment was designed following a literature review, interviews with serving police officers and an analysis of accidents involving police vehicles. This tested reactions and perceptions of police vehicles displaying different emergency lighting characteristics.
The trials found evidence to suggest faster flash rates enhance a driver's appreciation of the emergency vehicle's urgency and the wariness of their driving decisions. The experimental design will be used as a template for a large scale investigation in this under-researched field.
The Environment and Changing Behaviours
Project Overview
In a society which is looking to change human behaviours for envionrmental benefit, Transport for London (TfL) wanted to understand how people travelling to work could be helped to change from using their car to utilising public transport. Using the science of psychology and the collection of real-world data we worked with a large organisation to understand the individual reasoning behind why employees used either car or public transport to get to work. Barriers to changing behaviour were varied - including deeply held emotions, perception of public transport users and practical issues such as taking children to school and the ease of parking at the work premises.
As important to understanding why people are reluctant to change is understanding what induces change and how to retain change on a long term basis. Incentives for change were tested including perceptions of how others in the organisation travelled to work, free personal travel advice and travel cards.
Other key issues to preventing change were found such as how travel information is presented and the differences between experienced public transport users and those who had rarely used public transport. Barriers and incentives for short term and long term change were identified and suitable methods for change suggested.
Accidents in Rural Communities
Project Overview
Buckinghamshire Council requested a Human Factors review of four junctions that were perceived to have problems with fatal and serious collisions. The review of the junctions considered any impediments to normal human vision and perception and further considered the incident data that had led to the works proposal. The focus of this project switched quickly from perceived environmental problems to problems with interpreting data. Only one junction required actual physical remedial work and that the remaining junctions posed no greater problem than the norm and had simply been a case of misinterpretation of data viewed in isolation, rather than as a holistic data set.
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police and crowd
Police Car
Collisions Involving Pedestrians & Buses
Project Overview
This project adopted multiple methodologies to address an increase in pedestrian/bus collisions in the main thoroughfares of Brighton town centre. Observational studies of the environment and behaviour of pedestrians, ergonomic reviews of the buses, focus groups of bus drivers, examination of Police STATS 19 data and fatal incident case files provided a multi-layered approach to the problem posed. Proposals for interventions were two fold – firstly, an education campaign via local posters and banners designed using the principles of warning design. Advice regarding warning design was communicated to ensure that the safety message was seen, trusted and understood. Secondly, based on 'real world' and scientific research, engineering work and road alterations were undertaken which allowed pedestrians room to make mistakes and also accommodate the differences that exist between buses and other forms of transport.
Vehicle Stopping Technologies
Project Overview
This project took a User Centred approach to examine currently available vehicle stopping technology as used by selected police forces within the U.K. Ergonomic reviews of existing equipment in current use, interviews with Officers and trainers, and focus groups with users were undertaken. Information mapping was employed as a problem solving tool to correlate problems identified by the research with any currently available technological solutions and to provide a way forward for any unsolved issues within the current designs. The aim was to ensure that the User was central to any solution that may be innovated and to best inform the design and implementation of new equipment so that any proposed changes could be soundly based on evidence rather than perceptions.
Preventing Crashes Through Knowledge
Project Overview
Preventing crashes needs informed understanding of previous incidents to understand what happened, why, and how to use information to prevent incidents reoccurring. This project considered issues surrounding databases in general terms and the clients specific database and why they might not give good information on which to make decisions about resources and spend. The database was considered using psychological research in order to inform how humans make decisions, reason and problem solve, how we interpret data and the influence of biases. Form fields within the database and their presentation and requirements were also considered, as was the collection of accurate causation rather than phenomena of incidents. Immediate, medium and long term recommendations were made.
Road Traffic Collisions
Project Overview
This study considered data relating to three specific areas of interest in road traffic collisions within the Area 4 network of Kent and Sussex. The areas of specific interest were night time collisions, single vehicle collisions and child casualties. The report aimed to take an alternative ‘sideways’ approach in order to identify innovations and opportunities for interventions based on conclusions that could be drawn from existing data. Methodologies employed included data analysis; contextual reviews; and interviews with collision investigators. Causality was examined in order to identify issues and suggest innovations that would incorporate human abilities and limitations in the consideration of incident causation and deliver a way forward that considered both short and long term gains.
M25 Incidents & Collisions
Project Overview
This project used converging methodologies to examine accident data, anecdotal reports and physical environment from a human centric perspective. Incident files from the relevant police forces were examined to establish accurate causality and interviews with members of the relevant force’s collision investigation units as well as with Highways Agency operatives in order to obtain a holistic overview. Physical environment was considered relevant to known human limitations research. This was a limited pilot study that sought to present an example of the considerations that would be made when seeking to understand issues on a particular stretch of motorway and make recommendations based on that understanding.
Reducing Stationary Crashes with Police Cars
Project Overview
We were asked to consider why so many people collide with the rear of a stationary police car on a motorway. We started, like all our projects, with a careful understanding of the problem. In the first instance it appears at best strange that so many people collide with a highly visible vehicle. Using models of human perception and data gathering methodologies we investigated the crashes and found that these were caused by middle aged drivers – rather than young inexperienced drivers which is the norm. We undertook a field study and ran a number of simulations. Prior to our work police vehicle parked in-line with the approaching traffic. Following our work police vehicles parked at an angle to the approaching vehicles. The distance at which drivers react is increased – and the number of losses has radically decreased. This work was published in the following journal:
Langham M, Hole G, Edwards J, O'Neil C. (2002). An analysis of 'looked but failed to see' accidents involving parked police vehicles Ergonomics 45, 3, 167-185(19)
Improving Pedestrian Conspicuity
Project Overview
Following the death of a local police officer we investigated how well high visibility clothing works at night and found that overall it works very poorly. We conducted field trails and simulations to innovate a new uniform that improved conspicuity considerably. The new uniform design has been tested throughout the world and hopefully will be accepted as a better design by the relevant regulators.
Operation Paget
Operation Paget - Client MPS
Project Overview
Examination of the eyewitness testimony (EWT) raised an anomaly that helped fuel many a conspiracy theory. Forensic evidence identified the colour of the car that struck the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales and Mr Fayed as being white, and yet eyewitnesses overwhelmingly identified the car as black, or dark, in colour. After a review of the physical environment revealed no attributes that could affect colour misperception, attention was turned to scientific explanations regarding the limitations of eyewitness testimony. Examination of previous research in the area of EWT and colour perception was surprisingly lacking. Based on the science of attention and perception, our researcher devised an experimental scenario that would account for the misperception in colour. Trials of this experiment found that the effect of the transfer of the dominant stimulus colour (black car) to the peripheral stimulus (white car) was replicated. This illustrated that under conditions of high arousal as a witness to a serious accident a white car can actually become black.
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