Behavioral and psychosocial correlates of road traffic injuries: evidence from a nationwide study on Chinese undergraduates

The attentional guidance and facilitating effects of group behavioral cues on individual college pedestrians' jaywalking decisions

OBJECTIVE

Jaywalking is an important cause of pedestrian-related automobile accidents. Exploring the factors that influence jaywalking behavior and suggesting appropriate improvement measures are critical for reducing automobile accidents involving pedestrians.

METHODS

This study divided traffic situations into high-risk and low-risk situations. Each situation contained three visual attention cues: vehicle, traffic light, and group behavior. Based on this, the role of visual cues in guiding pedestrians' attention and influencing their decisions during jaywalking was examined. Sixty participants, with an average age of 19, were recruited. They were shown 84 crosswalk videos randomly while their crossing decisions and eye movement data were recorded.

RESULTS

In low-risk situations, pedestrians spent more attention on group behavioral cues when making jaywalking decisions. The rate of jaywalking increased with the number of other jaywalking pedestrians. In high-risk situations, the pedestrians' total fixation duration at vehicle hazard cues was longer when making jaywalking decisions, and the jaywalking rate decreased.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that pedestrians' jaywalking decisions were based on other pedestrians' illegal crossing cues and automatic associative processes in low-risk situations. The higher the number of people crossing the street, the higher the number of pedestrians illegally crossing the road. In high-risk situations, pedestrians paid more attention to vehicle hazard cues before making jaywalking decisions, and fewer illegal crossings. The jaywalking decisions were based on a risk assessment, a controlled analytical process. The results verify the effect of visual cues on pedestrians' attentional guidance and decision-making in different traffic situations, as well as the effectiveness of visual attention in predicting decision intention. The findings provide a theoretical basis and data reference for pedestrian safety education and constructing an intelligent driving pedestrian trajectory prediction model.

How Tired is Too Tired to Drive? A Systematic Review Assessing the Use of Prior Sleep Duration to Detect Driving Impairment

Driver fatigue is a contributory factor in approximately 20% of vehicle crashes. While other causal factors (eg, drink-driving) have decreased in recent decades due to increased public education strategies and punitive measures, similar decreases have not been seen in fatigue-related crashes. Fatigued driving could be managed in a similar way to drink-driving, with an established point (ie, amount of prior sleep) after which drivers are "deemed impaired". This systematic review aimed to provide an evidence-base for the concept of deemed impairment and to identify how much prior sleep may be required to drive safely. Four online databases were searched (PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase). Eligibility requirements included a) measurement of prior sleep duration and b) driving performance indicators (eg, lane deviation) and/or outcomes (eg, crash likelihood). After screening 1940 unique records, a total of 61 studies were included. Included studies were categorised as having experimental/quasi-experimental (n = 21), naturalistic (n = 3), longitudinal (n = 1), case-control (n = 11), or cross-sectional (n = 25) designs. Findings suggest that after either 6 or 7 hours of prior sleep, a modest level of impairment is generally seen compared with after ≥ 8 hours of prior sleep (ie, well rested), depending on the test used. Crash likelihood appears to be ~30% greater after 6 or 7 hours of prior sleep, as compared to individuals who are well rested. After one night of either 4 or 5 hours of sleep, there are large decrements to driving performance and approximately double the likelihood of a crash when compared with well-rested individuals. When considering the scientific evidence, it appears that there is a notable decrease in driving performance (and associated increase in crash likelihood) when less than 5h prior sleep is obtained. This is a critical first step in establishing community standards regarding the amount of sleep required to drive safely.