Key beliefs influencing young drivers’ engagement with social interactive technology on their smartphones: A qualitative study

Objective: The main aim of this study was to identify young drivers’ underlying beliefs (i.e., behavioral, normative, and control) regarding initiating, monitoring/reading, and responding to social interactive technology (i.e., functions on a Smartphone that allow the user to communicate with other people).

Method: This qualitative study was a beliefs elicitation study in accordance with the theory of planned behavior and sought to elicit young drivers’ behavioral (i.e., advantages, disadvantages), normative (i.e., who approves, who disapproves), and control beliefs (i.e., barriers, facilitators) that underpin social interactive technology use while driving. Young drivers (N = 26) aged 17 to 25 years took part in an interview or focus group discussion.

Results: Though differences emerged between the 3 behaviors of initiating, monitoring/reading, and responding for each of the behavioral, normative, and control belief categories, the strongest distinction was within the behavioral beliefs category (e.g., communicating with the person that they were on the way to meet was an advantage of initiating; being able to determine whether to respond was an advantage of monitoring/reading; and communicating with important people was an advantage of responding). Normative beliefs were similar for initiating and responding behaviors (e.g., friends and peers more likely to approve than other groups) and differences emerged for monitoring/reading (e.g., parents were more likely to approve of this behavior than initiating and responding). For control beliefs, there were differences between the beliefs regarding facilitators of these behaviors (e.g., familiar roads and conditions facilitated initiating; having audible notifications of an incoming communication facilitated monitoring/reading; and receiving a communication of immediate importance facilitated responding); however, the control beliefs that presented barriers were consistent across the 3 behaviors (e.g., difficult traffic/road conditions).

Conclusion: The current study provides an important addition to the extant literature and supports emerging research that suggests that initiating, monitoring/reading, and responding may indeed be distinct behaviors with different underlying motivations.     

Cycle Aware Package: Using Haddon’s matrix to reduce novice driver crashes with cyclists

Abstract

Objectives: What are we teaching drivers about safely interacting with cyclists? This is the main objective of the Cycle Aware project. As part of the study, a teaching and learning package is being developed to fill this gap in Australia.

Methods: Cycle Aware is a major national project that takes a mixed methods approach to investigate how cyclists are taught to share the road with cyclists when learning to drive. The project has five stages: (1) a national review of the driver licensing documentation; (2) interviews with key stakeholders (n?=?35) involved with novice driver education; (3) analysis of cyclist-novice driver crash data to identify the most frequent crash types; (4) develop a teaching and learning package (Cycle Aware Package), and; trial and evaluate Cycle Aware Package.

Results: Overall, drivers are taught little about sharing the road with cyclists. Representation of cyclists in government documentation is mixed and mostly negative and interviews identified driver-cyclist tensions related to attitudes and awareness of sharing the road. Crash types were similar among novice and experienced drivers. The Cycle Aware Package is being finalised and will be trialled in South Australia and Northern Territory in early 2019.

Conclusions: Cycle Aware will provide new insights into the way drivers are taught to share the road with cyclists. The Cycle Aware Package with interactive online content and driver competencies will facilitate a new approach to addressing this gap among Australia drivers.     

Parents’ work injuries and children’s mental health: The moderating role of children’s work centrality

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between parents’ work-related injuries and their children’s mental health, and whether children’s work centrality – the extent to which a child believes work will play an important part in their life – exacerbates or buffers this relationship. Method: We argue that high work centrality can exacerbate the relationship between parental work injuries and children’s mental health, with parental work injuries acting as identity-threatening stressors; in contrast, high work centrality may buffer this relationship, with parental work injuries acting as identity-confirming stressors. We test this relationship with a sample of Canadian children (N = 4,884, 46.2% female, M age = 13.67 years). Results:Children whose parents had experienced more frequent lost-time work-related injuries reported worse mental health with high work centrality buffering this negative relationship. Conclusions: Our study highlights the vicarious effects of work injuries on salient others, specifically parental work injuries on children’s mental health, as well as the role of work centrality in shaping children’s sense-making and expectations about the consequences of work.     

Children’s fear in traffic and its association with pedestrian decisions

Introduction: Research on risk for child pedestrian injury risk focuses primarily on cognitive risk factors, but emotional states such as fear may also be relevant to injury risk. The current study examined children's perception of fear in various traffic situations and the relationship between fear perception and pedestrian decisions. Method: 150 children aged 6–12-years old made pedestrian decisions using a table-top road model. Their perceived fear in the pedestrian context was assessed. Results: Children reported greater emotional fear when they faced quicker traffic, shorter distances from approaching traffic, and red rather than green traffic signals. Children who were more fearful made safer pedestrian decisions in more challenging traffic situations. However, when the least risky traffic situation was presented, fear was associated with more errors in children’s pedestrian decisions: fearful children failed to cross the street when they could have done so safely. Perception of fear did not vary by child age, although safe pedestrian decisions were more common among the older children. Conclusions: Children’s emotional fear may predict risk-taking in traffic. When traffic situations are challenging to cross within, fear may appropriately create safer decisions. However, when the traffic situation is less risky, feelings of fear could lead to excessive caution and inefficiency. Practical applications: Child pedestrian safety interventions may benefit by incorporating activities that introduce realistic fear of traffic risks into broader safety lessons.     

The mentoring information exchange: when do mentors seek information from their protégés?

The mentoring literature has focused largely on outcomes associated with having been mentored. This study considered informational outcomes associated with being a mentor, viewing the protégé as a source of information for the mentor and vice versa. Survey data were collected across 17 organizations from 161 mentors and 140 protégés. Mentor characteristics and perceptions and characteristics of the relationship were hypothesized to be related to mentors' seeking information from their protégés. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that perceived appropriateness of mentor information seeking, perceived protégé competence, vocational mentoring functions and protégé influence contributed significantly to the prediction of mentor information seeking among the mentor sample; hierarchical distance, perceived appropriateness and mentor self‐monitoring were significant predictors in the protégé sample. Future research directions are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Detection of spatially clustered outbreaks in motor vehicle crashes: What’s the best method?

Spatio-temporal surveillance methods for detecting outbreaks of disease are fairly common in the literature, with the SCAN statistic setting the benchmark. Spatio-temporal surveillance methods are less commonly described in relation to detection of outbreaks in motor vehicle crashes. The exponential two-pass CUSUM (E2PC) plan designed to detect age-clustered outbreaks is here compared to the SCAN statistic for early detection of spatially clustered outbreaks in crashes. If the shape and size of the outbreaks are known in advance, then the SCAN statistic has advantages over the E2PC plan. However, if outbreaks vary significantly in terms of size but are roughly rectangular in shape then the E2PC plan as outlined in this paper has advantages over the SCAN statistic.     

‘Management Standards’ and work-related stress in Great Britain: Progress on their implementation

The aim of this paper is to identify what constituted barriers to progress in the implementation of the Management Standards for preventing and reducing work-related stress nationally, an approach advocated by the Health and Safety Executive in Great Britain. Data were collected from more than 100 public sector organisations through inspector visits and research interviews. Findings show that under supportive contexts, organisations were able to follow the process of a stepwise method for assessing psychosocial risks and implementing interventions using HSE assessment tools and guidance. Main enabling factors included the active and visible support from senior management, human resource departments, and line managers; regular communications on progress, sufficient organisational capability in terms of resources and expertise; departmental/team level assessment as opposed to an overall corporate wide assessment, and involvement of key stakeholders (e.g. Trade Union, employees). Some of the critical barriers across many public sector organisations included in this study were: major or on-going organisational changes; lack of organisational capability; and the resource intensive aspect of the method requiring focus groups in addition to stress survey data. Implications of the findings for policy development are discussed.     

Protection of workers’ mental health in Québec: Do general duty clauses allow labour inspectors to do their job?

Given that no specific provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act explicitly deal with psychosocial risk factors, in Québec, occupational health and safety inspectors employed by the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST) address psychosocial hazards under the Act’s general duty clause. This general duty clause and related provisions require that all employers eliminate hazards at source and protect the health of workers. More specifically, they are required to ensure that the organisation of work does not adversely affect the safety or health of the worker. Since 2004, Québec minimum standards legislation has also provided for the right of workers to an environment that is free from psychological harassment.Written from both a legal and public health perspective, this paper has two primary objectives: first, to better understand the potential and limits of the current legislative framework for the protection of the mental health of workers and second, to describe how scientific knowledge related to high risk situations for the mental health of workers might inform interventions by inspectors for the protection of workers’ mental health.     

Are older drivers’ driving patterns during an on-road driving task representative of their real-world driving patterns?

Abstract

Objective: The current study investigated whether older drivers’ driving patterns during a customized on-road driving task were representative of their real-world driving patterns.

Methods: Two hundred and eight participants (male: 68.80%; mean age?=?81.52 years, SD?=?3.37 years, range?=?76.00–96.00 years) completed a customized on-road driving task that commenced from their home and was conducted in their own vehicle. Participants’ real-world driving patterns for the preceding 4-month period were also collected via an in-car recording device (ICRD) that was installed in each participant’s vehicle.

Results: During the 4-month period prior to completing the on-road driving task, participants’ median real-world driving trip distance was 2.66?km (interquartile range [IQR]?=?1.14–5.79?km) and their median on-road driving task trip distance was 4.41?km (IQR?=?2.83–6.35?km). Most participants’ on-road driving task trip distances were classified as representative of their real-world driving trip distances (95.2%, n?=?198).

Conclusions: These findings suggest that most older drivers were able to devise a driving route that was representative of their real-world driving trip distance. Future research will examine whether additional aspects of the on-road driving task (e.g., average speed, proportion of trips in different speed zones) are representative of participants’ real-world driving patterns.     

What’s past is prologue: Organizational learning from a serious patient injury

This exploratory case study examines how one hospital learned from an adverse event (AE), a medication overdose that seriously injured a patient. Using qualitative data analysis, we examined how four professional groups reacted to the AE: physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and representatives from the combined quality assurance and risk management departments. Following the AE, each professional group classified the event differently, assessed a different segment of history, made decisions about different issues, and chose different courses of action. Despite these differences, the physician, nursing and pharmacy management teams all decided on which solutions to implement before the first root cause analysis meeting was convened. Indeed, to understand how the hospital implemented changes in the aftermath of the AE, it was necessary to examine the learning from near misses and other warnings that preceded it. This case highlights the importance of the politics of organizational learning and raises theoretical and practical questions about how hospitals learn from potential and actual adverse events.     

What’s in a name? Drivers’ perceptions of the use of five SAE Level 2 driving automation systems

Introduction: Automobile manufacturers are developing increasingly sophisticated driving automation systems. Currently, the highest level of automation available on the market is SAE Level 2, which provides sustained assistance for both lateral and longitudinal vehicle control. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how drivers’ perceptions of what behaviors secondary to driving are safe while a Level 2 system is operating vary by system name. Methods: A nationally representative telephone survey of 2005 drivers was conducted in 2018 with questions about behaviors respondents perceived as safe while a Level 2 driving automation system is in operation. Each respondent was asked about two out of five system names at random for a balanced study design. Results: The name “Autopilot” was associated with the highest likelihood that drivers believed a behavior was safe while in operation, for every behavior measured. There was less variation observed among the other four SAE Level 2 system names when compared with each other. A limited proportion of drivers had experience with advanced driver assistance systems and fewer of these reported driving a vehicle in which Level 2 systems were available. Drivers reported that they would consult a variety of sources for information on how to use a Level 2 system. Conclusions: The names of SAE Level 2 driving automation systems influence drivers’ perceptions of how to use them, and the name “Autopilot” was associated with the strongest effect. While a name alone cannot properly instruct drivers on how to use a system, it is a piece of information and must be considered so that drivers are not misled about the correct usage of these systems. Practical Applications: Manufacturers, suppliers, and organizations regulating or evaluating SAE Level 2 automated driving systems should ensure that systems are named so as not to mislead drivers about their safe use.     

Learning to Drive: Learners’ Self-Reported Cognitive Failure Level Predicts Driving Instructor’s Observation Rating of Driving Performance

Objectives. Evidence increases that cognitive failure may be used to screen for drivers at risk. Until now, most studies have relied on driving learners. This exploratory pilot study examines self-report of cognitive failure in driving beginners and error during real driving as observed by driving instructors. Methods. Forty-two driving learners of 14 driving instructors filled out a work-related cognitive failure questionnaire. Driving instructors observed driving errors during the next driving lesson. In multiple linear regression analysis, driving errors were regressed on cognitive failure with the number of driving lessons as an estimator of driving experience controlled. Results. Higher cognitive failure predicted more driving errors(p < .01) when age, gender and driving experience were controlled in analysis. Conclusions. Cognitive failure was significantly associated with observed driving errors. Systematic research on cognitive failure in driving beginners is recommended.     

Moving on out: when are employees willing to follow their organization during corporate relocation?

This research examines the willingness of employees to follow their organization when the entire business unit is geographically relocating. The site for the study was a large government defense agency moving from a major U.S. northeastern metropolitan area to a rural area south of Washington, D.C. The study participants were 380 employees who were deciding within the next 6 months if they would relocate, too. Attachment to the present community, attachment to the current organization, and availability of job market alternatives are the factors most significantly associated with willingness to move during corporate relocation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Car drivers with dementia: Different complications due to different etiologies?

Objective: Older drivers with dementia are an at-risk group for unsafe driving. However, dementia refers to various etiologies and the question is whether dementias of different etiology have similar effects on driving ability.

Methods: The literature on the effects of dementia of various etiologies on driving ability is reviewed. Studies addressing dementia etiologies and driving were identified through PubMed, PsychINFO, and Google Scholar.

Results and Conclusions: Early symptoms and prognoses differ between dementias of different etiology. Therefore, different etiologies may represent different likelihoods with regard to fitness to drive. Moreover, dementia etiologies could indicate the type of driving problems that can be expected to occur. However, there is a great lack of data and knowledge about the effects of almost all etiologies of dementia on driving. One could hypothesize that patients with Alzheimer's disease may well suffer from strategic difficulties such as finding a route, whereas patients with frontotemporal dementia are more inclined to make tactical-level errors because of impaired hazard perception. Patients with other dementia etiologies involving motor symptoms may suffer from problems on the operational level. Still, the effects of various etiologies of dementias on driving have thus far not been studied thoroughly. For the detection of driving difficulties in patients with dementia, structured interviews with patients but also their family members appear crucial. Neuropsychological assessment could support the identification of cognitive impairments. The impact of such impairments on driving could also be investigated in a driving simulator. In a driving simulator, strengths and weaknesses in driving behavior can be observed. With this knowledge, patients can be advised appropriately about their fitness to drive and options for support in driving (e.g., compensation techniques, car adaptations). However, as long as no valid, reliable, and widely accepted test battery is available for the assessment of fitness to drive, costly on-road test rides are inevitable. The development of a fitness-to-drive test battery for patients with dementia could provide an alternative for these on-road test rides, on condition that differences between dementia etiologies are taken into consideration.     

Insight from hindsight: A practitioner’s perspective on a causal approach to performance improvement

The petrochemical industry works relentlessly on many fronts to improve performance and to create desired performance outcomes. Companies’ approaches vary widely; yet despite best efforts, the industry continues to experience periods of undesirable performance outcomes in product quality, reliability, process safety, environmental, and personal injury. The industry continues to search for better methods, techniques, and technology that are assumed to be missing, but the causes of incidents illustrate that what is in the way of improving performance may not be what is missing but rather what already exists.This paper provides an alternative perspective of performance problems viewed from underlying causes and patterns of causes of incidents in these so-called “high hazard industries” (Carroll, 2004) across several years and geographic regions. The perspective includes two distinct insights.

First, although problems can have a wide range of outcomes and impact, the underlying causal patterns are relatively few in number. These few represent essential elements that are repeatedly discovered in various forms under many unrelated problems.

Second, several common obstacles within organizations often inhibit the ability to find the causes, learn from the causes and to effectively address the causes of performance problems.

The conclusion is that when these repeating patterns are combined with a limited ability to effectively find, learn, and eliminate the causes, organizations are left with repeating periods of performance problems despite well-intended efforts to improve.     

“Like it’s wrong,but it’s not that wrong:” Exploring the normalization of risk-compensatory strategies among young drivers engaging in illegal smartphone use

Introduction: Young drivers are the most vulnerable road users and most likely to use a smartphone illegally while driving. Although when compared with drink-driving, attitudes to illegal smartphone risk are nearly identical, smartphone use among young drivers continues to increase. Method: Four in-depth focus groups were conducted with 13 young (18–25 years) drivers to gain insight into their perceptions of the risks associated with the behavior. Our aim was to determine how drivers navigate that risk and if their behavior shapes and informs perceptions of norms. Results: Three key themes emerged: (a) participants perceived illegal smartphone use as commonplace, easy, and benign; (b) self-regulatory behaviors that compensate for risk are pervasive among illegal smartphone users; and (c) risk-compensation strategies rationalize risks and perceived norms, reducing the seriousness of transgression when compared with drink-driving. Young drivers rationalized their own use by comparing their selfregulatory smartphone and driving skills with those of “bad drivers,” not law abiders. Practical Applications: These findings suggest that smartphone behaviors shape attitudes to risk, highlighting the importance for any countermeasure aimed at reducing illegal use to acknowledge how a young person’s continued engagement in illegal smartphone use is justified by the dynamic composition of use, risk assessment and the perceived norms.     

Dental Workers,Musculoskeletal CumulativeTrauma,and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Who is at Risk? A Pilot Study

A pilot study was conducted at a dental clinic to identify (a) the prevalence of musculoskeletal cumulative trauma disorders (MCTD), (b) associated symptoms (with special attention paid to carpal tunnel syndrome [CTS]), and (c) practitioners at risk. Videotapes, two questionnaires, a medical record review, and interviews were used. Forty-five dental workers participated and were classified into three categories: (a) dentists, (b) dental assistants and special assistants (DA/SA), and (c) dental hygienists and dental assistant-expanded function (DH/DAEF). Categorical data were analyzed using the chi- square statistic and risk ratios. The Fisher exact probability test was used for categorical data with a small cell. One or more symptoms associated with CTS were noted by 75.6% of the dental workers, 11% reported diagnosed CTS, and 53% reported back and shoulder pain. Both psychosocial factors and job demands appear to be associated with MCTD. All three categories of dental workers reported MCTD symptoms, and the DH/DAEF group was found to be at greatest risk for developing upper extremity symptoms, CTS, and back pain.