Driving as Night Falls

Driving as Night Falls The Contribution of Retinal Flow and Visual Direction to the Control of Steering

We have the ability to locomote at high speeds, and we usually negotiate bends safely, even when visual information is degraded, for example, when driving at night. There are three sources of visual information that could support successful steering. An observer fixating a steering target that is eccentric to the current heading must rotate their gaze. The gaze rotation may be detected by using...

Cellular phone use while driving at night.

OBJECTIVE Use of a cellular phone has been shown to negatively affect one's attention to the driving task, leading to an increase in crash risk. At any given daylight hour, about 6% of US drivers are actively talking on a hand-held cell phone. However, previous surveys have focused only on cell phone use during the day. Driving at night has been shown to be a riskier activity than driving durin...

Reaction times as an index of visual conspicuity when driving at night.

Conspicuity refers to the visibility of objects that are either close to threshold or viewed in a cluttered environment. Conventional, threshold-based tests of vision are unlikely to be related to target visibility, because visual systems behave differently under supra-threshold and close-to-threshold conditions, or when low luminance levels are used. In these experiments, Reaction Times (RTs) ...

Sleepiness, Long Distance Commuting and Night Work as Predictors of Driving Performance

Few studies have examined the effect of working night shift and long distance commuting. We examined the association between several sleep related and demographic variables, commuting distance, night work and use of mobile phones on driving performance. We used a prospective design to recruit participants and conducted a telephone survey (n = 649). The survey collected demographic and journey d...

Night-time driving: the use of seat-belts and alcohol.