How do bicyclists respond to vehicles with adaptive headlamp systems? A nighttime study in an immersive virtual environment.

INTRODUCTION: The risk of motor vehicle-bicyclist crashes and fatalities is greater during nighttime than daytime lighting conditions, even though there are fewer cyclists on roadways at night. Vehicle Adaptive Headlamp Systems (AHS) aim to increase the visibility of bicyclists for drivers by directing a spotlight to illuminate bicyclists on or near the roadway. AHS technology also serves to alert bicyclists to the approaching vehicle by illuminating the road beneath the rider and by projecting a warning icon on the roadway. METHOD: Here, we examined how bicyclists respond to different AHS designs using a large screen, immersive virtual environment. Participants bicycled along a virtual road during nighttime lighting conditions and were overtaken by vehicles with and without an AHS system. The experiment included five treatment conditions with five different AHS designs. In each design a box of white light was projected beneath the rider; in four of the designs an icon was also projected on the road that varied in color (white or red) and position (to the left of the rider at midline or to the left of the front wheel). Participants in the control condition experienced only non-AHS vehicles. RESULTS: We found that riders in all AHS treatment conditions moved significantly farther away from overtaking vehicles with AHS systems, whereas riders in the control condition did not significantly move away from overtaking vehicles without AHS systems. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: The experiment demonstrates that AHS has potential to increase bicycling safety by influencing riders to steer away from overtaking vehicles.

Longitudinal and Concurrent Effortful Control as Predictors of Risky Bicycling in Adolescence: Moderating Effects of Age and Gender.

OBJECTIVE: Collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles are one of the leading risk factors for injury and death in childhood and adolescence. We examined longitudinal and concurrent effortful control (EC) as predictors of risky bicycling behavior in early- to mid-adolescence, with age and gender as moderators. We also examined whether EC was associated with parent-reported real-world bicycling behavior and all lifetime unintentional injuries. METHODS: Parent-reported EC measures were collected when children (N = 85) were 4 years old and when they were either 10 years (N = 42) or 15 years (N = 43) old. We assessed risky bicycling behavior by asking the adolescents to bicycle across roads with high-density traffic in an immersive virtual environment. Parents also reported on children's real-world bicycling behavior and lifetime unintentional injuries at the time of the bicycling session. RESULTS: We found that both longitudinal and concurrent EC predicted adolescents' gap choices, though these effects were moderated by age and gender. Lower parent-reported early EC in younger and older girls predicted a greater willingness to take tight gaps (3.5 s). Lower parent-reported concurrent EC in older boys predicted a greater willingness to take gaps of any size. Children lower in early EC started bicycling earlier and were rated as less cautious bicyclists as adolescents. Adolescents lower in concurrent EC were also rated as less cautious bicyclists and had experienced more lifetime unintentional injuries requiring medical attention. CONCLUSION: Early measures of child temperament may help to identify at-risk populations who may benefit from parent-based interventions.

Rates and predictors of teen driver crash culpability.

BACKGROUND: Motor-vehicle crash risk is highest among teen drivers. Despite a wealth of research on the topic, there are still many contributors to these crashes that are not well understood. The current study sought to examine the contribution of graduated driver licensing (GDL) restrictions, sex, age, roadway circumstances, and citation history to teen drivers' crash culpability. METHOD: Crash system data from the Iowa Department of Transportation were linked with traffic-related charges from the Iowa Court Information System. Crashes involving teens aged 14 to 17 years between 2016 and 2019 were analyzed (N = 19,847). Culpability was determined using the driver contributing circumstances from the crash report. Moving and non-moving traffic citations issued prior to the date of each crash were considered. A multivariable logistic regression model was constructed to examine predictors of crash culpability. RESULTS: Teen drivers were determined to be culpable for more than two thirds of crashes (N = 13,604, 68.54%). Culpability was more prevalent among males, younger teens, in rural areas, in the presence of reported roadway contributing circumstances, during hours of restricted nighttime driving, and among teens with citation histories that included both moving and non-moving citations. Similarly, multivariable model results indicated that the likelihood of culpability was higher among males, in rural areas, and at each stage of GDL compared to teen drivers with unrestricted licenses. While drivers with a history of both moving and non-moving violations were more likely to be culpable, those with a history of only moving or only non-moving violations were less likely to be culpable compared to those with no violation history. CONCLUSION: Sex, crash location, and GDL stage were associated with teen driver crash culpability. A singular prior moving or non-moving violation may play a protective role in teen crash culpability.

How children judge affordances when walking and bicycling across virtual roads: Does mode of locomotion matter?

This investigation examined whether the mode of locomotion matters in how 8-, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old children (N = 91) judge dynamic affordances in a complex perception-action task with significant safety risks. The primarily European American children in the sample came from the area of Iowa City, Iowa and were balanced for gender. The same children crossed a single lane of continuous traffic on foot and on bike (order counterbalanced) in identical immersive virtual environments. We found that although 8-year-olds chose significantly larger gaps when crossing on bike than on foot, these gaps were not large enough to compensate for their delay in entering the gap and their slowness in crossing the road. As a result, they ended up with less time to spare when exiting the roadway on bike than on foot. In contrast, 14-year-olds exhibited no difference in their gap choices on bike than on foot, nor did they exhibit a difference in their timing of entry into the gap. However, they crossed the road much more quickly on bike, resulting in significantly more time to spare when crossing on bike than on foot. The 10- and 12-year-olds' performance fit neatly between that of the 8- and 14-year-olds. We conclude that as children gained better control over the bike with age, they were better able to match their gap decisions with their crossing movements such that bicycling afforded even safer road-crossing than walking for 14-year-olds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A comparison of daytime and nighttime pedestrian road-crossing behavior using an immersive virtual environment.

OBJECTIVE: Reduced visibility for both drivers and pedestrians is a key factor underlying the higher risk of vehicle-pedestrian collisions in dark conditions. This study investigated the extent to which pedestrians adjust for the higher risk of road crossing at night by comparing daytime and nighttime pedestrian road crossing using an immersive virtual environment. METHOD: Participants physically crossed a single lane of continuous traffic in an immersive pedestrian simulator. Participants were randomly assigned to either the daytime or the nighttime lighting condition. The primary measures were the size of the gap selected for crossing and the timing of crossing motions relative to the gap. RESULTS: The results showed that there were no significant differences in gap selection or movement timing in daytime vs. nighttime lighting conditions. However, there was a marginal increase in the time to spare after crossing the road when crossing in the dark, likely due to an accumulation of small differences in gap choices and movement timing. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that pedestrians do not adjust their road crossing to account for greater risk at night. As such, this study adds to our understanding of the potential risk factors for pedestrian injuries and fatalities in nighttime conditions.

How Do Child ADHD Symptoms and Oppositionality Impact Parent-Child Interactions When Crossing Virtual Roads?

OBJECTIVE: This study examined how parents and children interact when crossing virtual roads together. We examined (1) whether children's inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality and children's failure to jointly perform the task interfered with parents' efforts to scaffold children's road-crossing skill and (2) whether experience with the joint road-crossing task impacted children's subsequent performance in a solo road-crossing task. METHODS: Fifty-five 8- to 10-year-old children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and their parents first jointly crossed a lane of traffic in an immersive pedestrian simulator. Children then completed the same road-crossing task alone. Parents completed questionnaires about children's symptoms of inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality. RESULTS: Analyses of the joint road-crossing task showed that when parents and children crossed different gaps, parents suggested and opposed more gaps and were less likely to use a prospective gap communication strategy (i.e., communicating about a crossable gap prior to its arrival). Crossing different gaps was also associated with increased expressions of negative affect among parents and children and an increase in collisions among children. Children's level of parent-reported oppositionality also predicted an increase in child defiance and parental redirection of child behavior. Analyses of children's subsequent crossing performance indicated that parents' use of a prospective gap communication strategy during the joint road-crossing task predicted selection of larger gaps during the solo crossing task. CONCLUSIONS: Not crossing through the same gap and increased levels of child oppositionality interfered with the scaffolding process, potentially informing future parent-based intervention efforts for increasing children's road-crossing safety.

How do pedestrians respond to adaptive headlamp systems in vehicles? A road-crossing study in an immersive virtual environment.

Three-fourths of pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. occur in the dark (National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 2020). Adaptive Headlight Systems (AHS) offer the potential to address this problem by improving the visibility of pedestrians for drivers and alerting pedestrians to approaching vehicles. The goal of this study was to investigate how pedestrians respond to different types of AHS. We conducted a mixed factor experiment with 106 college-age adults using a large-screen pedestrian simulator. The task for participants was to cross a stream of continuous traffic without colliding with a vehicle. There were four AHS treatment conditions that differed in the color (white or red) and timing of an icon projected on the roadway in front the participant as an AHS vehicle approached. Participants in the treatment conditions encountered a mix of AHS and non-AHS vehicles. There was also a control condition in which participants encountered only non-AHS vehicles. We found that the color and the timing of the icon projected on the roadway influenced the size of the gaps crossed. Participants in the red icon with early onset condition chose the largest gaps for crossing. An unexpected outcome was that participants in the AHS treatment conditions chose larger gaps even when crossing in front of non-AHS vehicles, suggesting that experiences with AHS vehicles generalized to non-AHS vehicles. We conclude that AHS can have a significant, positive impact on pedestrian road-crossing safety.

Let's Cross the Next One: Parental Scaffolding of Prospective Control Over Movement.

This investigation examined parental scaffolding of children's prospective control over decisions and actions during a joint perception-action task. Parents and their 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children (N = 128) repeatedly crossed a virtual roadway together. Guidance and control shifted from the parent to the child with increases in child age. Parents more often chose the gap that was crossed and prospectively communicated the gap choice with younger than older children. Greater use of an anticipatory gap selection strategy by parents predicted more precise timing of entry into the gap by children. This work suggests that social interaction may serve as an important experiential mechanism for the development of prospective control over decisions and actions in the perception-action domain.

Family Communication Patterns and Teen Driving Intervention Effectiveness.

Objectives: Teen drivers are at increased crash risk, largely due to lack of experience. Parents play a key role in influencing teen behaviors and attitudes around driving safety. Parent-involved interventions may improve teen driving safety but tend to be resource intensive and have limited scalability. In this study, we examined how family communication patterns (FCPs) impact teen risky driving and the effectiveness of a parent-focused teen driving intervention. Methods: Our data came from a large randomized controlled teen driving intervention trial. We randomized parent-teen dyads into one of 3 groups: parent communication intervention plus in-vehicle event recorder feedback; in-vehicle event recorder feedback only ; or control. The primary outcome variable was teen risky driving (self-reports and triggered events); the primary exposure variables were FCPs and intervention group. We used generalized linear models to calculate effect estimates. Results: Teens' baseline risky driving did not vary by family communication pattern. The impact of the parent-focused intervention was stronger in families with a laissez-faire FCP. The laissez-faire FCP focuses little on child conformity and downplays communication. Conclusions: These results provide a framework for targeting high-resource teen driving interventions (event recorder feedback and parent-communication training) to families with laissez-faire communication patterns to attain the greatest risk reductions.

Do mother-child conversations about safety differ in middle- and low-income families?

BACKGROUND: Children from low-income families experience a disproportionate number of unintentional injuries compared to their middle-income peers. Parents are well positioned to teach children about avoiding injury, yet little is known about parent-child safety conversations in low-income families. This study examined to what extent mother-child safety conversations differ between low- and middle-income families. METHODS: Mothers and their 8- to 10-year-old children from low- and middle-income families discussed and rated the safety of photos showing another child engaged in potentially dangerous activities. RESULTS: Dyads disagreed over safety ratings on a third of trials, and both middle- and low-income mothers were highly successful in resolving disagreements in their favor. Middle-income mothers justified their ratings by referring to almost twice as many dangerous features than outcomes, whereas low-income mothers generated roughly equal numbers of dangerous features and outcomes. Middle-income children did not differ in their references to dangerous features and outcomes, but low-income children focused heavily on dangerous outcomes relative to dangerous features. CONCLUSIONS: Describing how middle- and low-income families discuss safety is a first step in understanding whether similarities and differences contribute to how middle- and low-income children evaluate and navigate potentially dangerous situations.

How Does Crossing Roads with Friends Impact Risk Taking in Young Adolescents and Adults?

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this investigation was to examine how crossing roads with a friend versus alone affects gap decisions and movement timing in young adolescents and adults. METHODS: Ninety-six 12-year-olds and adults physically crossed a single lane of continuous traffic in an immersive pedestrian simulator. Participants completed 30 crossings either with a friend or alone. Participants were instructed to cross the road without being hit by a car, but friend pairs were not instructed to cross together. RESULTS: Pairs of adolescent friends exhibited riskier road-crossing behavior than pairs of adult friends. For gaps crossed together, adult pairs were more discriminating in their gap choices than adult solo crossers, crossing fewer of the smaller gaps and more of the larger gaps. This pattern did not hold for 12-year-old pairs compared to 12-year-old solo crossers. To compensate for their less discriminating gap choices, pairs of 12-year-olds adjusted their movement timing by entering and crossing the road more quickly. For gaps crossed separately, both adult and 12-year-old first crossers chose smaller gaps than second crossers. Unlike adults, 12-year-old first crossers were significantly less discriminating in their gap choices than 12-year-old second crossers. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to adults, young adolescents took riskier gaps in traffic when crossing virtual roads with a friend than when crossing alone. Given that young adolescents often cross roads together in everyday life, peer influences may pose a significant risk to road safety in early adolescence.

Harnessing Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) Communication Technology: Sending Traffic Warnings to Texting Pedestrians.

OBJECTIVE: We examined how sending mobile-device warnings to texting pedestrians when they initiate an unsafe road crossing influences their decisions and actions. BACKGROUND: Pedestrian texting has been identified as a key risk factor in pedestrian-vehicle collisions. Advances in sensing and communications technology offer the possibility of providing pedestrians with information about traffic conditions to assist them in safely crossing traffic-filled roadways. However, it is unclear how this information can be most effectively communicated to pedestrians. METHOD: We examined how texting and nontexting pedestrians crossed roads with continuous traffic in a large-screen, immersive pedestrian simulator using a between-subjects design with three conditions: texting, warning, and control. Texting participants in the warning condition received an alarm on their cell phone when they began to cross a dangerously small gap. RESULTS: The results demonstrate the detrimental influence of texting on pedestrians' gap selection, movement timing, and gaze behavior, and show the potential of warnings to improve decision making and safety. However, the results also reveal the limits of warning texting participants once they initiate a crossing and possible overreliance on technology that may lead to reduced situation awareness. CONCLUSION: Mobile devices and short-range communication technologies offer enormous potential to assist pedestrians, but further study is needed to better understand how to provide useful information in a timely manner. APPLICATION: The technology for communicating traffic information to pedestrians via mobile devices is on the horizon. Research on how such information influences all aspects of pedestrian behavior is critical to developing effective solutions.

Changes in perception-action tuning over long time scales: How children and adults perceive and act on dynamic affordances when crossing roads.

This investigation examined developmental change in how children perceive and act on dynamic affordances when crossing roads on foot. Six- to 14-year-olds and adults crossed roads with continuous cross-traffic in a large-screen, immersive pedestrian simulator. We observed change both in children's gap choices and in their ability to precisely synchronize their movement with the opening of a gap. Younger children were less discriminating than older children and adults, choosing fewer large gaps and more small gaps. Interestingly, 12-year-olds' gap choices were significantly more conservative than those of 6-, 8-, 10-, and 14-year-olds, and adults. Timing of entry behind the lead vehicle in the gap (a key measure of movement coordination) improved steadily with development, reaching adultlike levels by age 14. Coupled with their poorer timing of entry, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' gap choices resulted in significantly less time to spare and more collisions than 14-year-olds and adults. Time to spare did not differ between 12-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults, indicating that 12-year-olds' more conservative gap choices compensated for their poorer timing of entry. The findings show that children's ability to perceive and act on dynamic affordances undergoes a prolonged period of development, and that older children appear to compensate for their poorer movement timing skills by adjusting their gap decisions to match their crossing actions. Implications for the development of perception-action tuning and road-crossing skills are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

The role of Body Mass Index in child pedestrian injury risk.

The goal of the current investigation was to examine obesity as a potential risk factor for childhood pedestrian injury. A racially diverse sample of 7- and 8-year-old children completed a road-crossing task in a semi-immersive virtual environment and two pedestrian route selection tasks. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that children with a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) waited less before crossing, had a smaller temporal buffer between themselves and oncoming traffic while crossing, and had more collisions with traffic. Girls were more cautious than boys when crossing the virtual roadway. Unlike the results from the virtual road-crossing task, BMI was not associated with risky route selection. Instead, race emerged as the strongest predictor, with African-American children selecting riskier routes for crossing. Together, these findings suggest overweight and obese children may be at increased risk for pedestrian injury. The discussion considers explanations for why obese children may exhibit riskier road-crossing behavior.

Parent-Child Injury Prevention Conversations Following a Trip to the Emergency Department.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to examine how parents use conversation to promote the internalization of safety values after their child has been seriously injured. METHODS: Parent interviews detailing postinjury conversations were coded for strategies mentioned to prevent injuries in the future and information about circumstances surrounding the injury. RESULTS: Logistic regression analyses revealed that parents were more likely to discuss why an activity was dangerous with older than younger children, and were more likely to urge daughters than sons to be more careful in the future. Injuries resulting from the presence of environmental hazards predicted parents telling children to be more careful in the future. Having others involved predicted parents urging children not to engage in the behavior again. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that parents modulated strategies according to age, gender, and injury circumstances to maximize the likelihood that children would behave differently in the future.

Mother-child conversations about safety: implications for socializing safety values in children.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined how mothers socialize their children about safety through conversations about potentially unsafe activities. METHODS: Mothers and their 8- and 10-year-old children discussed and rated the safety of 12 photographs depicting another same-gender child engaged in potentially dangerous activities. RESULTS: Conversations usually unfolded with children giving the first rating or rationale, followed by additional discussion between the mother and child. Mothers and children relied on 2 main types of rationales to justify their ratings: potential outcomes of the activity and specific features of the situation (dangerous and nondangerous). Mothers (but not children) used dangerous feature rationales more often than dangerous outcome rationales. When disagreements arose, mothers typically guided children to adopt their own rating rather than the child's rating. Additionally, children who used more nondangerous feature and outcome rationales had experienced more injuries requiring medical attention. CONCLUSIONS: Mothers' focus on dangerous features appears to reflect their efforts to help children make causal connections between dangerous elements of the situation and adverse outcomes that might result.

Child Pedestrian Injury: A Review of Behavioral Risks and Preventive Strategies.

Pedestrian injury is among the leading causes of pediatric death in the United States and much of the world. This paper is divided into two sections. First, we review the literature on behavioral risk factors for child injury. Cognitive and perceptual development risks are discussed. The roles of distraction, temperament and personality, and social influences from parents and peers are presented. We conclude the first section with brief reviews of environmental risks, pedestrian safety among special populations, and the role of sleep and fatigue on pediatric pedestrian safety. The second section of the review considers child pedestrian injury prevention strategies. Categorized by mode of presentation, we discuss parent instruction strategies, school-based instruction strategies (including crossing guards), and streetside training techniques. Technology-based training strategies using video, internet, and virtual reality are reviewed. We conclude the section on prevention with discussion of community-based interventions.

Distraction and pedestrian safety: how talking on the phone, texting, and listening to music impact crossing the street.

As use of handheld multimedia devices has exploded globally, safety experts have begun to consider the impact of distraction while talking, text-messaging, or listening to music on traffic safety. This study was designed to test how talking on the phone, texting, and listening to music may influence pedestrian safety. 138 college students crossed an interactive, semi-immersive virtual pedestrian street. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups: crossing while talking on the phone, crossing while texting, crossing while listening to a personal music device, or crossing while undistracted. Participants distracted by music or texting were more likely to be hit by a vehicle in the virtual pedestrian environment than were undistracted participants. Participants in all three distracted groups were more likely to look away from the street environment (and look toward other places, such as their telephone or music device) than were undistracted participants. Findings were maintained after controlling for demographics, walking frequency, and media use frequency. Distraction from multimedia devices has a small but meaningful impact on college students' pedestrian safety. Future research should consider the cognitive demands of pedestrian safety, and how those processes may be impacted by distraction. Policymakers might consider ways to protect distracted pedestrians from harm and to reduce the number of individuals crossing streets while distracted.