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This chapter explores Erich Korngold's score in the 1942 black and white Hollywood film, King's Row. This Warner Bros. production was based on a bestselling 1940 novel by Henry Bellamann, a writer whose career began not as a literary creator but as a music teacher. Much remains to be examined regarding Korngold's score in this film's legendary history. Still more remains to be uncovered regarding the way this music mediates the unsettling and sometimes horrific (and horrifically ableist) narrative. Kings Row's main character, Parris Mitchell, observes near the end of the film that “the caverns of the human mind are full of strange shadows,” and in the film those strange shadows have the power of being accompanied by Korngold's remarkably sumptuous, complex, and effective music.

New in-vehicle touch screen displays are increasing in size and complexity, and the effect on distraction to the driver associated with their use is unclear. Large touchscreen displays, such as those in the Tesla, provide a richer display environment as well as a larger area compared to traditional in-vehicle touchscreens even when the same capabilities are available. This simulator study examines how performing the same tasks on two different types on in-vehicle displays impacts glance behavior, vehicle control and workload. Results show that the large touchscreen results in longer average glance lengths, a greater percentage of glances of more than 2-seconds, but fewer glances. For vehicle control, there were no differences in lateral control, but the large touchscreen showed less variability in speed and speed range overall, but not uniformly across the tasks. Drivers did not report different levels of workload between the two interfaces. The results point to the need for careful design to minimize the likelihood of long glances as vehicle design moves to larger displays.

In the final decades of the 20th century, as disability rights activists protested ableist prejudice and discrimination, scholars began to group themselves around the topic of disability. In 1982 the Society for Disability Studies was founded; 1990 saw the passage of the US Americans with Disabilities Act, a piece of landmark legislation that sought to address systemic discrimination on the basis of physical and mental disabilities; and conferences and journals devoted to Disability Studies began to flourish in the 1990s. The relatively young interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies approaches disability beyond the traditional epistemologies of medical science and instead considers bodily and mental differences as both embodied experiences and constructs of particular cultures and societies. Following earlier work done on gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity, Disability Studies explores the social, cultural, and historical meanings of disability as a manifestation of human variety, celebrating disability as a difference while acknowledging the lived experience of possessing a bodily or mental impairment. While music scholars have long been aware of the possibility of composers and performers with impairments—Beethoven’s deafness is central to the narrative of Western music history—they only began to engage with ideas from Disability Studies in the first decade of the 21st century. The year 2006 was notable for both an article in a major music journal (Straus 2006, cited under Music and Disability Studies) and the first book-length study on disability in music (Lerner and Straus 2006, also under Music and Disability Studies). A large body of music scholarship quickly followed, including dissertations, conferences papers, journal articles, and monographs, and the scope and approaches to music and disability have been as varied and distinct as the human bodies and minds under study.

Distracted driving has been identified as a major concern in highway safety. Research to-date, however, has largely focused on distraction related to external events or intentional engagement in non-driving activities. Internal distraction (“mind wandering”) is now being recognized as a significant source of driver distraction that requires rigorous study. There are substantial challenges in detecting, measuring, and addressing mind wandering while driving. Panelists with expertise in driver distraction in general, and mind wandering in particular, will discuss both scientific and pragmatic issues in addressing this problem. Each panelist will present a brief perspective on the problem from the point of view of their experience and expertise. This will be followed by an open discussion period.

In this note, we consider the use of 3D models for visual tracking in controlled active vision. The models are used for a joint 2D segmentation/3D pose estimation procedure in which we automatically couple the two processes under one energy functional. Further, employing principal component analysis or locally linear embedding from statistical learning, one can train our tracker on a catalog of 3D shapes, giving a priori shape information. The segmentation itself is information based, which allows us to track in uncertain adversarial environments. Our methodology is demonstrated on realistic scenes, which illustrate its robustness on challenging scenarios.

Mind wandering is a pervasive threat to transportation safety, potentially accounting for a substantial number of crashes and fatalities. In the current study, mind wandering was induced through completion of the same task for 5 days, consisting of a 20-minute monotonous freeway-driving scenario, a cognitive depletion task, and a repetition of the 20-minute driving scenario driven in the reverse direction. Participants were periodically probed with auditory tones to self-report whether they were mind wandering or focused on the driving task. Self-reported mind wandering frequency was high, and did not statistically change over days of participation. For measures of driving performance, participant labeled periods of mind wandering were associated with reduced speed and reduced lane variability, in comparison to periods of on task performance. For measures of electrophysiology, periods of mind wandering were associated with increased power in the alpha band of the electroencephalogram (EEG), as well as a reduction in the magnitude of the P3a component of the event related potential (ERP) in response to the auditory probe. Results support that mind wandering has an impact on driving performance and the associated change in driver’s attentional state is detectable in underlying brain physiology. Further, results suggest that detecting the internal cognitive state of humans is possible in a continuous task such as automobile driving. Identifying periods of likely mind wandering could serve as a useful research tool for assessment of driver attention, and could potentially lead to future in-vehicle safety countermeasures.

This experiment investigated the extent to which driver comprehension of imminent crash warnings is affected by the degree of integration when there are multiple Connected Vehicle products in the vehicle. Two displays were placed in an experimental vehicle: one representing original equipment and one representing a portable, nomadic device. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five device integration conditions. Participants drove on a test track and were occasionally presented with either a nonurgent message or an urgent crash warning. Participants recognized warnings most quickly when only one display was active in the car; when both displays were active, response times generally improved when messages and warnings were integrated into a single physical location. Warning recognition times were longer when a warning closely followed a non-urgent message on the other display than when a warning followed a non-urgent message on the same display. When messages and warnings from both source displays were integrated into a single display, this effect was not observed, suggesting that the separate display locations are responsible for the increased warning recognition time rather than the different formats of the messages from each source device.

This panel addresses a research methodology that is becoming more essential for driving safety research. The methods of driving simulation and naturalistic driving have been prominent and remain important, but their limitations are becoming more evident. On-the-road experimental methods offer some of the advantages of naturalistic driving while providing a degree of experimental control and manipulation more typical of simulator experiments. Five expert researchers will discuss both scientific and pragmatic issues in the conduct of on-the-road experimentation, making use of lessons learned from their own studies. Each panelist will present a brief perspective on the problem from the point of view of their experience and expertise. This will be followed by an open discussion period.

Many different experimental methods are used to evaluate driving performance as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of various vehicle safety systems but the results often do not match between different experimental approaches. This study aimed to determine the extent to which results can be matched between a driving simulator and a test track when carefully designed studies are used to replicate findings. This study collected simulator data on the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) at the University of Iowa to replicate findings concerning Forward-Crash-Warning interface effectiveness at the Vehicle Research and Test Center (VRTC), East Liberty Ohio. The simulator used a virtual replica of the test track as well as a road course. Event choreography and scanning behavior were compared. Results indicate that results from the simulator were similar to those obtained on the test track. This indicates simulators can replicate findings for the test track and are a valuable tool. Careful experimental design is required to match the event choreography to insure an appropriate comparison. An exact match of the driving environment was not needed for this interface evaluation to obtain comparable results. The extent to which matching motion cues was not evaluated and may prove challenging in simulators without motion systems.

The 1945 Warner Bros. filmPride of the Marinesoffers a revealing case study for ways that a Hollywood film could represent visual impairments. Based on an actual Marine who had suffered serious vision loss while fighting in World War II, this film had a number of people working on it who would soon find themselves suffering under from the politics of anticommunism (two of its writers were among the Hollywood Ten, and its star actor was also blacklisted). In addition to visual elements, dialogue, and acting techniques, the music provides an important dimension to the ways blindness could be represented and stereotyped in a Hollywood film, and in so doing it points to the largely undiscussed questions of music in the way disabilities were depicted in films.

The new, interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies offers a sociopolitical analysis of disability, focusing on its social construction and shifting attention from biology to culture. Within music, disability has been shown to be a core feature of the musical identity of music makers (especially composers and performers), often an identity that is affirmatively claimed in the face of widespread stigma. It has also inflected reception of the lives and work of composers and performers. Although music is a famously nonrepresentational art form, scholars have shown that musical works represent disability in various ways. Furthermore, music has proven a fertile ground for exploring the contention within Disability Studies that disability (like gender) can be understood as a performance: something you do rather than something you are. In all of these ways, disability both shapes and is shaped by culture, including musical culture.

The objective of this discussion panel is to approach the teen driver distraction issue from the driver life-style point of view. As revealed in various focus groups and surveys, multi-tasking is “just what they do,” and what they have grown up doing. How (if at all) is the current generation of young drivers distinct in terms of multi-tasking? What are the implications and how might we deal with this? The approach here is to provide a multi-disciplinary panel that offers a range of expertise and perspectives on studying these issues. Each of five panelists will present a brief perspective of the problem from the point of view of their expertise. This will be followed by an open discussion period.

Michael Long teases the reader with the titular phrase “beautiful monsters” in his introduction, waiting until page 129 to explain that he is borrowing it from an anonymous writer for Melody Maker ...

Certainly a great part of the appeal of music videos comes from their seductive weaving of musical, visual, and verbal threads, but the scholarly study of music videos has been vexed by, among othe...

The association between teenage passengers and crash risks among young drivers may be due to risky driving behavior. We investigated the effect on two measures of risky driving in the presence of young male and female passengers. Vehicles exiting from parking lots at 10 high schools were observed and the occupants were identified by gender and age (teen or adult). At a nearby site, the speed and headway of passing traffic were recorded using video and LIDAR technology. Teenage drivers drove faster than the general traffic and allowed shorter headways, particularly in the presence of a male teenage passenger. Both male and female teenage drivers allowed shorter headways (relative to no passenger or a female passenger) in the presence of a male teenage passenger, while the presence of a female teenage passenger resulted in longer headways for male teenage drivers. Overall, the observed rate of high risk driving (defined as speedor =15 mph or more above the posted speed limit and/or headway ofor =1.0 s) for the teen male driver/male passenger condition was about double that of general traffic. In conclusion, the presence of male teenage passengers was associated with risky driving behavior among teenage drivers.

This paper describes a new resource for developing and evaluating consumer product instructions. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) staff, when conducting product safety assessments, often finds that the instructions provided with a product are deficient and result in consumers misassembling or misusing the product. Therefore, CPSC staff recently released the Manufacturer's Guide to Developing Consumer Product Instructions. This Guide is unique in providing a relatively comprehensive, yet compact, set of principles specifically addressing the development and evaluation of instructional material for consumer products. It has a strong human factors orientation. The approach to developing the document was based upon the behavioral sequence that must be accomplished if the final outcome is to be a change in product user behavior. The content, structure, and perspective of the Guide make it useful for human factors professionals in product design, safety research, and forensics, as well as for developers of instructions and safety materials.

Research on driver perception and interpretation of auditory signals has generally been conducted under conditions of low-to-moderate ambient in-cab noise. In a series of four experiments, the effects of various ambient noise conditions on the perceived meaning of auditory signals were investigated. Noise conditions that may be realistically anticipated in the course of normal driving altered the perceived urgency and meaning of signals. The presence and extent of such changes was a function of the specific auditory signal, the ambient noise condition, and their interaction. The results indicate that in-vehicle auditory signal design criteria developed only under low-to-moderate ambient noise conditions are not likely to be sufficient. The significant signal-by-ambient noise interaction further suggests that multiple noise backgrounds must be considered.

From its earliest days as little more than a series of monophonic outbursts to its current-day scores that can rival major symphonic film scores, video game music has gone through its own particular set of stylistic and functional metamorphoses while both borrowing and recontextualizing the earlier models from which it borrows. With topics ranging from early classics like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. to more recent hits like Plants vs. Zombies, the eleven essays in Music in Video Games draw on the scholarly fields of musicology and music theory, film theory, and game studies, toinvestigate the history, function, style, and conventions of video game music.

Misperceptions of the time available or time required for various driving maneuvers under a range of conditions were studied. In the laboratory experiment, research participants viewed video scenes of a wide variety of situations and made judgments about when some event would occur (e.g., approaching vehicle reaches them) or when some maneuver would be completed (e.g., own vehicle clears roadway when making a crossing maneuver). Participants' judgments were compared with objectively determined values. A parallel on-road experiment, using similar procedures and a subset of the laboratory situations, was used to validate and benchmark the laboratory findings. The study found a general tendency for people to underestimate the time required for a maneuver. This misjudgment is safety-critical, because it may lead to decisions to accept maneuver opportunities that actually afford a smaller margin of error than the driver perceives. Such misestimates were particularly common for judgments of the time to achieve the prevailing traffic speed during turning or merging maneuvers, and for the time until one's vehicle reaches an intersection ahead. For judgments of the time available for a maneuver, people more frequently felt they had less time than they actually did, so would be less likely to attempt a maneuver. However, even for time available judgments, there were meaningful numbers of safety-critical errors. Some situations emerged as particularly meriting consideration for safety countermeasures. These included: (1) approach to signalized intersections; (2) turns onto higher-speed roadways; (3) freeway merges; (4) passing; and (5) headway maintenance. A number of promising countermeasure ideas addressing these issues were developed and recommended for formal evaluation.

This experiment concerned the types of information travelers feel should be provided in Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS) messages. Participants were provided with detailed hypothetical trip scenarios and were required to compose en route ATIS messages for each one. Two types of ATIS messages were included: “general messages,” appropriate for general traffic and limited in length (typical of variable message signing) and “personalized” messages, of unlimited length, tailored to the driver's own trip (representative of in-vehicle route planning and guidance products). Participants also indicated what information they considered to be most important, and indicated what their route choice would be in the given situation. The findings were analyzed in terms of message content (amount, type, and sequence of information items), item importance, and relationship to route choice. The results were found to have a number of implications for the design of ATIS messages.

This experiment addressed the types of ATIS information travelers prefer to acquire, and how the information influenced route choice. Hypothetical trip scenarios provided information such as primary and alternative routes, time of day, current weather, trip purpose, etc. The participant had a set of from 9 to 16 sealed envelopes for each scenario, labeled as to the type of information inside. The participant opened as many envelopes as desired, in any order, to reach a decision as to what route to take. Participants typically only acquired three items of information, even though there were no constraints on information acquisition. “Incident location” was the most frequently selected, and most often opened first, but “delay” was most often cited as the most important item. Estimated travel times on the primary or alternate route were sought by some participants. Cluster analysis revealed three primary groups of individuals in terms of common information strategies. The findings are interpreted in terms of implications for the design of ATIS messages.

Younger drivers, particularly males, are greatly overrepresented in collisions and differ from adults in their evaluation of risks. Risky driving may relate to many points along a sequence of operations that includes hazard recognition/evaluation, assessed accident likelihood, judged ability to control emerging events, perceived vulnerability, global assessment of the level of risk, motives and influences, risk acceptability, and behavioral decisions. This experiment investigated the points in the sequence at which young males were most discrepant from other drivers. Participants viewed driver's-eye video of scenes that included numerous hazard types. For each scenario, they made a series of ratings and open-ended responses corresponding to various points along the risk behavior sequence. The results highlighted the perceived ability to control emerging hazard events through vehicle control skills as a key factor distinguishing young male drivers. This and other aspects of the findings suggest strategies for focusing driver training and safety countermeasure development.

Collisions during backing maneuvers are a common accident type and cause a significant number of injuries and fatalities. Backup warning systems are among the intelligent vehicle warning applications being developed. Designing effective warning criteria and display characteristics is a serious challenge because little is known about how drivers behave during backing maneuvers. Drivers often intentionally back their vehicles into close proximity to objects, and backing speeds vary greatly, so appropriate conditions for warning a driver are unclear. A series of experiments was conducted to provide a basis for the design of effective vehicle-based backup warning devices. The experiments concerned driver behavior, perceptions, and responses to warning signals. One experiment measured common behaviors and vehicle control aspects during backing maneuvers. Another experiment measured driver brake reaction time and stopping distance to an acoustic signal during various backing maneuvers. A third experiment required participants in a car that was backing toward an object to identify the point at which they would want to receive cautionary and imminent crash warnings. Key findings are highlighted and their implications for the design of backup warning systems are discussed. Findings suggest the most effective design is a two-level warning system using acoustic signals as the primary mode and time to collision as a primary means of recognizing probable driver errors. Although preliminary, a time to collision of approximately 1.5 to 2.0 sec appears to be a reasonable criterion for an imminent crash warning, based on joint consideration of normal maneuver characteristics, driver reaction times, and driver judgments of appropriate warning times.

This chapterexamines the history of music in video games, particularly arcade games, during the period from 1977 to 1983. It identifies the factors that influenced early video game music and describes the process of creating the musical score for games such as Space Invaders and Donkey Kong. It suggests that the early history of video game music has parallels with the early film music practices and shows that video games adopted many of the same strategies for fitting music to screen action.

These words famously open both the original Star Trek series as well as the popular spin-off series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, though the later iteration changes “man” to the more gender-neutral “one” while retaining the split infinitive that would torment later grammarians. In both series, an equally iconic musical passage accompanies these iconic words. The three seasons of the original Star Trek television series that originally aired between 1966 and 1969 set the stage for a remarkable series of five future spin-off series. The Star Trek franchise, with its optimistic imagining of humanity’s future in the twenty-third century, has been and remains one of the most significant and influential of all television science fiction series, possessing a large and vibrant fan culture as well as impacting the history of the U.S. space shuttle program in the 1970s.1 Philip Hayward has highlighted the connection between the television programming surrounding the 1960s space race and the parallel appearance of popular science fiction television series in addition to Star Trek, like Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Lost in Space; Hayward also notes how the signature tunes for these series were “strongly evocative” of the science fiction genre.2 Because of the popularity and success of Star Trek, a comparative consideration of the themes from the six different Star Trek series, which span from 1966 to 2005, offers useful insights into some of the central questions surrounding SF television music. For instance, does a title theme for a science fiction television series have to sound a certain way? What expectations exist for the title theme music in a science fiction television series? What stylistic, generic, and timbral qualities work best to alert a viewer that a SF show is starting, and which ones may cut too hard against the grain of convention such that they alienate fans? And in whatThe original Star Trek series appeared in the midst of a decade marked in no small part by the U.S. exploration of space-the name Enterprise was given to a prototype of the space shuttle, a remarkable achievement for a cancelled television show that ran for only three seasons-and the series’ creator Gene Roddenberry found his “wagon train to the stars” show in competition with another series centering on space travel, Lost in Space. (CBS declined Star Trek in favor of Lost in Space, and Star Trek found its home on NBC.) John (credited at that time as “Johnny”) Williams wrote the main theme for Lost in Space; with its blending of brass instruments and a theremin-like sound, it followed in many ways the timbral model of Bernard Herrmann’s influential score for The Day the Earth Stood Still.6 Yet Williams’s Lost in Space theme differed from Herrmann’s music in its playful, even childlike, character. Instead of adopting a Herrmannesque science fiction sound for his main title music for Star Trek, composer Alexander Courage created a memorable blend of musical styles that was part Mahlerian world-weariness, part Coplandesque pastoralism, and part space-age bachelor pad randiness: the pedal points and descending perfect fourth are strongly reminiscent of the opening to Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, aspects of Appalachian Spring emerge with the pedal points (on the same opening pitch, A) and disjunct melodies, and the propulsive main part of the theme deploys a beguine rhythm and feminine vocal part that has a lounge-music or exotica flavor consistent with the space age bachelor pad music of the Mexican composer, Juan Garcia Esquivel. Roddenberry selected Courage to compose for the pilot after considering an impressive allstar list of possible composers; Roddenberry’s notes from December 8, 1964, included both well-established names (such as Franz Waxman, David Raksin, Hugo Friedhofer, and Elmer Bernstein) and up-and-comers who have since become quite famous, like Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams:Jerry Goldsmith-Not Available Elmer Bernstein-Interested-likes pilot wants to read script. Harry Sukman-MGM-available Les Baxter-available Dominic Tronteri [sic. Dominic Frontiere who did the music for The OuterLimits]—available Franz Waxman-available Sy Coleman-suggested by Oscar Katz Alexander Courage-young composer-up and coming Hugo Friedholder [sic]—did some of the original music on Voyage to theBottom of the Sea David Raxton [sic]—wrote Laura. Works closely with the producer Johnny Green-would love to do a series, did music for Empire Leith Stevens-Doing Nobak-did the 1st few shows for Empire, scoreda feature with a science fiction themeThe subsequent rising minor seventh in the horn melody (A to D, D to G) and then in the main melody (F to E-flat) subtly balances the interval of the minor seventh traced out by the descending line in the opening.

As the frequency and diversity of use of portable electronic devices by drivers has increased, so have the roadway safety concerns associated with such multitasking. It has been argued that the driving public needs to be better informed about the risks of multitasking, and if they were so informed, people would restrict such practices. Yet various surveys show that in general the public seems to recognize that the use of portable electronic devices while driving does impose significant risk. This study reports the results of a survey of highway and vehicle safety professionals, a group highly informed about the problem and often engaged in efforts on this very issue. It would be instructive to see how this group behaves in terms of its own portable electronic device use while driving. An internet survey was distributed to members of two prominent professional society technical groups in driver safety. The survey revealed substantial cell phone use while driving, moderate text messaging, and little engagement in such activities as social networking, internet browsing, or e-book reading. Members of this expert community actively provided guidance about portable electronic device use while driving to others, including children and teens, family, and friends.

A field experiment was conducted in daylight with 32 participants to determine whether left turning drivers’ gap acceptance in front of approaching motorcycles depends on the motorcycle’s forward lighting treatment. Five experimental lighting treatments including a modulated high beam headlamp, or the low beam headlamp plus pairs of low-mounted auxiliary lamps, high-mounted auxiliary lamps, both high- and low-mounted auxiliary lamps, or low-mounted LED lamps were compared to a baseline treatment with only the low beam headlamp illuminated. Participants viewed the approaching traffic stream (including the motorcycle) on an active roadway and indicated when it would be safe (and not safe) to initiate a left turn across the opposing lanes. Participants also shared their attention with a secondary visual distraction task that took their eyes off the forward roadway. Participants did not know that the purpose of the study was to measure their responses to approaching motorcycles. Based on participants’ indications of the last safe moment to turn, the mean temporal safety margin provided to the approaching motorcycle did not differ significantly between any of the experimental lighting treatments and the baseline treatment. However, having either low-mounted auxiliary lamps or modulated high beam lamps on the motorcycle significantly reduced the probability of obtaining a potentially unsafe short safety margin as compared to the baseline lighting treatment. Overall, the results suggest that enhancing the frontal conspicuity of motorcycles with lighting treatments beyond an illuminated low beam headlamp may be an effective countermeasure for daytime crashes involving right-of-way violations.

Motor vehicle crashes are the main cause of morbidity and mortality in teenagers and young adults in the United States. Driving exposure and passenger presence, which can both vary by driver and passenger characteristics, are known to influence crash risk. Some studies have accounted for driving exposure in calculating young driver fatal crash risk in the presence of passengers, but none have estimated crash risk by driver sex and passenger age and sex. One possible reason for this gap is that data collection on driving exposure often precludes appropriate analyses. The purpose of this study was to examine, per 10 million vehicle trips (VT) and vehicle-miles traveled (VMT), the relative risk of fatal crash involvement in 15-20-year-old male and female drivers as a function of their passenger's age and sex, using solo driving as the referent. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System provided fatal motor vehicle crash data from 1999 to 2003 and the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) provided VT and VMT. The NHTS collects driving exposure for both household and non-household members (e.g., friends, colleagues), but demographic characteristics only on household members. Missing age and sex of non-household passengers were imputed with hot deck using information from household passengers' trips with non-household drivers, thereby enabling the calculation of crash rate and relative risk estimates based upon driver and passenger characteristics. Using this approach, the highest risk was found for young male drivers with 16-20-year-old passengers (relative risk [RR] per 10 million VT = 7.99; 95% confidence interval [CI], 7.34-8.69; RR per 10 million VMT = 9.94; 95% CI, 9.13-10.81). Relative risk was also high for 21-34-year-old passengers, again particularly when both drivers and passengers were male. These effects warrant further investigation and underscore the importance of considering driving exposure by passenger characteristics in understanding crash risk. Additionally, as all imputation techniques are imperfect, a more accurate estimation of U.S. fatal crash risk per distance driven would require national surveys to collect data on non-household passenger characteristics.

Failure to use a seat belt is a significant highway safety concern for teenagers. The current Federally-required seat belt reminder system is limited in its effectiveness, and many automobile manufacturers are now providing enhanced seat belt reminder (ESBR) systems. Current systems are designed for the general driving public and their design must represent a trade-off between effectiveness in promoting belt use and consumer acceptance. Teens may respond differently to system features and trade-off considerations may be different for risk-prone teens. This study conducted research to evaluate teen driver and passenger reactions to a variety of ESBR systems and features. The study was conducted in an operational, but stationary vehicle, with simulated drives. Systems and features were evaluated regarding their likelihood of increasing belt use, annoyance, signal appropriateness, desirability, and other aspects. Discussion groups were also held with the parents of teen drivers. Based on findings of the experiment and discussions, a set of recommendations was developed for the design of optimal ESBR systems oriented toward teen drivers and their passengers.

Driver behavior and crash rates vary with the presence of passengers but the details of this relationship are not well understood. The literature generally does not take into account the characteristics of passengers, yet effects on crashes may vary dramatically with passenger age and gender. This study estimated the amount of exposure (driving miles) done by various driver age/gender categories with various combinations of passengers. Statistical imputation techniques were used to derive travel estimates for various pairings using data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey. Crash frequencies for every pairing were obtained from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and were used to compute fatal crash rates (per 10 million trip miles). The findings reported here focus on adult (21 and older) drivers. The results show that drivers of a given type (age/gender group) show dramatically different crash rates as a function of passenger type. Some passenger types are associated with fatal crash rates higher than that with no passenger, while other passenger types are associated with lower crash rates. The details of this relationship depend to some degree on driver characteristics. Crash rates for different driver age/gender groups overlap substantially based on the passenger, so that the “best” and “worst” driver groups are passenger-specific. For adult male drivers, female passengers are generally associated with lower crash rates. For male drivers, there is a higher crash rate with a male passenger of a given age than with a female passenger of the same age, even for child passengers.

This project investigated the decision process involved in a driver’s willingness to engage in various technology-related and non-technology tasks. The project included focus groups and an on-road study, both employing participants who used in-vehicle technologies to at least some degree, from four age groups: teen, young, middle, and older. The focus groups discussed the perceptions, motivations, attitudes, and decision factors that underlie driver choices. The on-road study had two phases: an on-road drive and a take-home booklet. Participants drove their own vehicles over a specified route. They did not actually engage in in-vehicle tasks, but at specified points they rated their willingness to engage in some specific task at that time and place. Eighty-one different situations (combination of in-vehicle task and driving circumstances) were included. Further information was collected in the take-home booklet regarding the participant’s familiarity with various in-vehicle technologies, additional situations for willingness and risk ratings, stated reasons underlying ratings, and self-ratings of certain aspects of driving behavior and decision-making style. Together, the focus groups and on-road study provided complementary findings about how drivers decide when to engage in potentially distracting tasks. Driver willingness to engage in various in-vehicle tasks was related to technology type, specific task attributes, driving conditions, personal motivations, driving style, and decision style. Specific project findings were related to potential countermeasure approaches, including public education; driver or device user training; user interface design; needs for warnings and information; criteria for function lock-outs; and driver assist system criteria.

The quantitative measurement of driver behavior has been central to much of the systematic research underlying highway safety issues during the past forty years. It has contributed to the way in which we design roads, vehicles, training programs, signs and markings, and intelligent transportation systems. Yet the methods we use to conduct driver behavior experiments may result in a disconnect with the circumstances under which crash events occur. This is particularly evident in problems related to young, inexperienced drivers. This paper discusses some of the systematic biases that characterize the quantitative driver behavior research base regarding youthful drivers. Some broader implications for the general study of driver behavior and performance are then considered.