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The article deals with the issue of traffic-psychological assessment, especially the part concerning psychological diagnosis. It presents an overview of diagnostic approaches at the European Union level and defines individual steps of traffic-psychological assessment. Special attention is paid to the definition of personality and performance traits that need to be examined as a part of traffic-psychological assessment. In addition to summarising them, we also consider the ways in which such traits may be assessed and what crucial variables may be used for such assessment. We explore the issue of adaptive testing and the possibility of the utilisation of neural networks in the assessment process. Finally, we emphasize the essential role of a case study-level professional assessment conducted by an experienced traffic psychologist and the conclusions drawn from such examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participants were asked to walk inside the city along a route, which consisted of streets with various amounts of vegetation and various degrees of traffic intensity. The walking speed was measured in eight selected sections. The environmental properties of the sections were estimated by raters, who described a level of naturalness of a place, intensity of traffic, noise, openness of a space, and restorative qualities of a place, as well as emotional reactions in particular sections. Participants tended to walk slightly faster in sections without greenery and with a higher level of traffic than in sections with greenery and with a small level of traffic. Further, it was found that sections, where participants walked slower, had higher restorative qualities (measured by the Perceptual Restorative Scale) and elicited more positive emotions than areas where participants walked faster. The results are discussed in terms of approach-avoidance behavior (Mehrabıan and Russell,1974), as well as with the concept of attention restorative theory (Kaplan and Kaplan,1989). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]