What a truly beautiful seticleon of British cars thanks for uploading.I'm English so remember some of these models commonly on the road as a youngster. On our walk to school my brother and I always used to pass and admire a yellow Triumph Dolomite Sprint parked in a drive not far from our house.The Jag E-Types you have are particularly stunning. Bravo!
Technology issues and driving education
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: Wednesday, 06. June 2012
With more and more drivers competing for limited roadway space, traffic engineers and safety experts are looking to new technologies to counter problems of congestion, aggressive driving, and crashes.
The new technologies-such as automated toll roads, road pricing, intelligent vehicle systems, smart highways, and electronic displays of information-may offer benefits, but they also create issues and negative effects in relation to freedom of travel, the role of the automobile in the transportation system, driver responsibility, the environment, and even safety.
As leading risk psychology expert Gerald Wilde brilliantly demonstrates in his book Target Risk , efforts to increase safety through technology often have limited, or even opposite effects. People seem to have a level of risk they accept in their lives, and technologies aimed at reducing risk tend to lead to changes in behavior, Wilde argues. Unless motivated otherwise, he says, they will tend to simply use the technologies to get more benefits from the system, while maintaining their risk at the same level. A prime example of this is studies showing that drivers of cars with Antilock Braking Systems (a great improvement in braking technology) tend to have more crashes rather than less. They tend to drive faster and more vigorously than drivers without the systems.
Professor Wilde proposes that improving risk perception and reducing risk acceptance through training, education, and motivation can be effective strategies for countering these tendencies.
Even technologies that provide useful information to the driver can have their problems. One problem is the danger of distraction. Giving a driver information about congestion ahead, or a turn required to reach a destination, might be too much if the driver is already overloaded due to things happening around the car. Another problem is deciding the form in which information should be provided. Individuals relate to information differently. Some prefer to hear it, others to see it.
Cognitive Mapping is a branch of science that studies how people perceive the world around them and how they best relate to information about it. It covers such issues as the design of maps, signposting, human-machine interfaces, and control systems.
Gary Burnett, a project officer with the HUSAT Research Institute at Loughborough University in the U.K. is working on the design of human-machine interfaces for the cars of the future. He's concerned that giving drivers guidance information in terms of distances ("turn left after 300 metres") is not very effective since many drivers appear to have a poor sense of distance. It can lead to "significant visual demand" on the part of the driver, he says, as they become overly concerned with in-vehicle visual displays. Junction layout information such as landmark descriptions might be better, he suggests.
However, descriptive information can be a problem too. Landmarks change, and in today's visually messy driving environment it's not always easy to recognize intersections or distinguish them from other roadway features (such as entrances to shopping plazas). As well, individual drivers may be visually tuned to different kinds of cues and it could be difficult to design an information system to suit most drivers. Consistency of roadway design could help here, and that's something that traffic engineers are working on, says Richard Pain, a safety coordinator with the U.S. Transportation Research Board.
Roadway design will increasingly conform to standards that drivers expect, says Dr. Pain, and standardized visual cues will help drivers recognize roadway features such as intersections and types of highways. The Netherlands, he points out, have plans to adopt their entire road system to this concept within 20 years. "They've selected three primary categories of highways on which design will match driver expectancy." The U.S. also has a federal highway design consistency project under way, he says.
Driver educators may be able to play a significant role in matching driver abilities to new technologies aimed at assisting them. In addition to informing drivers about the technologies, and the issues surrounding them, educators may be able to help drivers adapt. For example, they might be taught to perceive distances, or roadway features, more accurately.
Developmental psychologist Catherine Sullivan sees a possible role for education and training in helping drivers match with new technologies. However, she points out, "individual differences are here to stay. It may not be possible to teach someone who has problems with spatial information to estimate distances accurately."
"Any new device requires a certain degree of learning, and a happy medium could be reached by finding out what system is easiest to learn," she says. However, Dr. Sullivan adds "machines and systems should be designed to fit the needs of the learner rather than the other way around."
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Ramses,
