BRAKE Research

BRAKE Research

Australia’s road death toll continues to climb

In this radio interview, Dr Ingrid Johnston, CEO of the Australasian College of Road Safety, joins the show to discuss the rising road deaths on Australian roads. Dr Johnston suggests that as a country we just accept that road trauma happens. However, when there is...

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Australia Road Death August Monthly Report

Unfortunately, each month, people are dying on our roads. The impact this has on so many loved ones and the broader community of each death is horrific. Each death on our road is not just a statistic, nor should each death be seen as just a consequence of using our...

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Dual task conditions are especially demanding for older drivers

Dual task conditions are especially demanding for older drivers. For example, while driving a car the driver has to process additional information (e.g. from the navigation system) and to react in an appropriate way. Especially under demanding driving conditions impairments in reaction time have to be expected.

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Community participation in traffic law enforcement

Community participation is often the key to effective policing. The people who live and work in an area are best placed to identify the problems facing them and possible solutions to those problems” Department for International Development UK, 2000

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Motivating behaviour change among young drivers

Young drivers are the most over-represented group in injury crash statistics, predominantly due to their inexperience; yet several factors that contribute to their over-representation fall under volitional control. Over the past decade, there has been increasing research support for biologically-driven explanations of this greater vulnerability to crashes

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Taxi Drivers and Road Safety

This report examines aspects of taxi driver road safety in three parts: first, a study of N.S.W. data concerning taxi accidents from 1993-1995; second, a survey of Sydney metropolitan taxi drivers regarding job-related variables, attitudes, fatigue, personality and driving behaviour, together with accident details; and third, qualitative responses from taxi drivers about their working conditions and experience of the profession.

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The Psychology of Road Rage

The concept of “road rage” is relatively new. It was only in the 1990s that the media began to focus on road rage incidents, leading some commentators to argue that road rage is a media invention and not a real phenomenon.

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European Road Safety Observatory Novice Drivers

Traffic crashes are the single greatest killer of 15 to 24 year olds in OECD countries, and, although data is not always available, the situation appears to be no better in other, non-OECD countries. This web text focuses on young and novice drivers in the age group of 18-24, addressing the magnitude and nature of the problem, and it discusses effective countermeasures.

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The State of Driver Education

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has sponsored a project to “reinvent” driver education into a form that reduces crashes by novice drivers. The research team reviewed the current driver education literature in order to identify novice driver needs, evaluate methods of instruction, and assess the effectiveness of driver education in influencing behaviour. The researchers then proposed performance objectives for driver education graduates and methods for achieving those objectives.

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Learner driver experience project

MUARC were commissioned to conduct a longitudinal study to assess two driver-related cognitive perceptual skills, hazard perception and situation awareness over three separate assessment sessions. The major focus was to investigate how these two skills develop as novices accumulated driving experience in the first 18 to 24 months of driving.

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Fear-based information campaigns

Fear appeals confront people in a rather hard and often shocking way with the negative consequences of risky behaviour and also show how to change undesirable behaviour. Fear-based information, also called fear appeals, confronts people with the negative consequences of risky behaviour by capitalizing on their fears. The confrontational character of this type of information evokes interest and keeps the attention.

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The Influence of Fear Arousal and Perceived Efficacy on the Acceptance and Rejection of Road Safety Advertising Messages

This paper examines the effects of fear arousal and perceived efficacy on the acceptance and rejection of road safety advertising messages that are typical in Australia and New Zealand.
Our results suggest that the level of fear arousal could be lowered without a significant effect on the message acceptance rates but could result in a lower rate of message rejection.

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The Effectiveness of Driver Training As a Road Safety Measure

The effectiveness of driver training as a road safety measure is a controversial issue within the professional and public arena. The worth of driver training for car drivers as a means of improving driver behaviour and reducing road crash involvement is continually debated in Australia and overseas.

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Motor-Vehicle Crashes and Factors That Contribute

The motor-vehicle crash risk of novice teen drivers is unacceptably high. This article examines the historical trends in fatal crash rates for male and female teen drivers as compared to adult drivers by both population and person-miles driven. The effect of motor-vehicle policies on teen driver crashes, characteristics of teen driver crashes, and combinations of these crash characteristics are also examined.

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On the relationship of crash risk and driver hours of service

Changes in the U.S. hours of service policy in January 2004 argue for an assessment of the safety implications of the new policy. Time-dependent logistic regression and case-control sampling are applied to derive a sample of 231 crashes and 462 non-crashes during 2004 for three national-scale trucking companies.

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Road Deaths Australia 2008 Statistical Summary

The current issue presents fatal crash data for 2008 and makes comparisons with earlier years. Recent changes in numbers of deaths show in 2008, there were 1,464 people killed in road crashes. In comparison to the previous year, this is a decline of 8.7%. During the five year period ending 2008, the average annual decline was 1.4%.

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The Role of Driver Distraction in Traffic Crashes

Driver inattention is a major contributor to highway crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 25% of police-reported crashes involve some form of driver inattention with estimates that approximately 25% of police-reported crashes involve some form of driver inattention, asleep or fatigued, or otherwise “lost in thought”

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