Scholarship & Research
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Item Emotional intelligence and dangerous driving behaviors(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2022) Ahmed, Jubaer; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Nicholas Ward; Nicholas Ward, Jay Otto and Annmarie McMahill were co-authors of the article, 'How does emotional intelligence predict driving behaviors among non-commercial drivers?' in the journal 'Journal of transportation research part F: psychology and behaviour' which is contained within this dissertation.; Nicholas Ward, Jay Otto and Annmarie McMahill were co-authors of the article, 'The influence of emotional intelligence on dangerous driving: a comparison between commercial and non-commercial drivers' submitted to the journal 'Journal of safety science' which is contained within this dissertation.; Nicholas Ward, Jay Otto and Annmarie McMahill were co-authors of the article, 'Developing a scale to assess emotional intelligence in the context of driving' submitted to the journal 'Journal of personality assessment' which is contained within this dissertation.Dangerous driving behaviors are the leading cause of road crashes and fatalities. Many factors contribute to dangerous driving behaviors including drivers' beliefs, attitudes, personalities, and emotions. Of these, the role of emotions has received less attention. Emotional Intelligence theory provides a framework for understanding how individuals' emotional factors influence their behaviors and interactions with others. Therefore, this research aims to understand how emotional intelligence can be used to investigate and alleviate dangerous driving behaviors. The research aims of this dissertation include 1. Identify the most appropriate measure of emotional intelligence that is currently available for the driving context; 2. Examine the correlations between emotional intelligence and dangerous driving behaviors in different risk exposure groups (commercial and non-commercial drivers); 3. Develop an emotional intelligence measure specific to the context of driving. This research dissertation comprised four survey studies conducted between November 2019 to July 2021 among commercial and non-commercial drivers across the United States. The results further revealed higher emotional intelligence scores related to less dangerous driving behaviors for both commercial and non-commercial drivers. However, the relationship between emotional intelligence and dangerous driving was significantly stronger among commercial drivers than their non-commercial counterparts. In the final study, this research developed a new Drivers' Emotional Intelligence Scale (DEIS) specific to driving. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure for DEIS labeled as emotionality, self-control, and anxiety. The results showed that the DEIS subscales were stronger predictors of dangerous driving behaviors compared to the previously used emotional intelligence scales. This research concludes that improving emotional intelligence will be useful to reduce dangerous driving behaviors and suggests incorporating emotional intelligence to design interventions to reduce fatal road crashes. This research acknowledges some limitations such as the use of self-reported surveys and convenience quota samples, which may have limited the generalizability of these results. Future research should continue to gather evidence about the association between emotional intelligence and traffic safety through different experimental designs and longitudinal studies.Item Improving experimental methods: exploring procedural mechanisms affecting participant behaviors(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2016) Page, Lenore Trinette; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: David ClaudioResearch with human participants involves a complex combination of procedural elements in order to establish internal, external and measurement validity. Examining the accuracy of research equipment and methods that elicit similar behaviors as the general public is difficult. This research used driving as a model to address elements in the procedures that participants experience to elicit realistic behaviors. An instrumented vehicle (IV) and driving simulator (SIM) measured experimental behaviors for average approach speed (in the 20m before the legal stop line); lateral distance from curb at 20m; lateral distance from curb at legal stop line (0m) and the stopping location (distance before or after 0m); and, compared with measured general driving public behaviors at stop-controlled intersections. The linear mixed effect analyses combined two experiments. In both, surveys were administered to gather driver's trait anxiety, driving anxiety and social desirability scores. Experiment One drivers (36% female) were grouped as Novice (5, 16-17 year olds who just obtained driving license), Young (4, 16-17 year olds who obtained license over a year ago) and Adult (5, 30-55 year olds licensed near age 16). Experiment Two drivers (47 SIM, 44 IV; 35% female) were College age (18-21 year olds licensed near age 16) and exposed to 1 of 16 different combinations (one of those treatments matched Experiment One's procedure) of procedural changes for: researcher attire (casual or formal), researcher proximity (control room, front or rear passenger seat), mode of instruction delivery (spoken, read or video) and hypothesis statement (none or explicit). At the end of Experiment Two, participants' understanding of the experiment was coded into three debriefing variables. Absolute behavioral validity of the IV to public behavior was achieved in one treatment (formal, front seat, spoken and no hypothesis) and including the debriefing variables in the model; no SIM combination achieved this. Trait anxiety scores appeared to explain behaviors in the IV or SIM and improved result interpretation as interactions with other independent variables. For improved research methods, it is recommended that coded debriefing variables, specific procedural elements, and trait anxiety scores be included and used to explain interactions or differences in participant behaviors.Item An eye scanning approach of exploring the experience level at which novice drivers exhibit hazard perception skill as good as their experienced counterparts(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2015) Imtiaz, Ahmed Salman; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Laura Stanley; Nicholas Ward (co-chair)Hazard perception is a key skill needed to drive a vehicle safely. Literature has shown that this skill improves with experience. Little is known regarding the time window in which novice young drivers start exhibiting essential hazard perception skills as efficiently as their experienced counterparts do. This research was an attempt to address this unknown through the use of a semi-naturalistic driving study employing eye tracking technologies and by examining the roadway eye scanning pattern of young and highly experienced drivers with respect to eight indicators: percentage of gaze duration, mean gaze duration, percentage of time taken to make the first gaze at the study region of interest, gaze rate, gaze heading, gaze pitch, head heading and head pitch. A total of 90 participants completed the study. Participants were split into six groups (15 each) on the basis of their driving experience, ranging from novice young drivers with less than 1 year of driving experience, to highly experienced drivers with more than 10 years of experience and asked to drive through two predetermined potentially hazardous scenarios. An observation time window, beginning at the first moment the potential hazard came into view through the moment it had passed, was extracted from the recorded eye-movement videos. Based on the time window, necessary data were collected and analyzed. The results of the study indicated that novice drives do not differ significantly with other young drives, but their visual search strategy remains inflexible even after two years of experience. However, with growing experience, young drivers learn to look farther ahead and scan more widely along their horizontal field of view. The study thus adopted Equivalence Testing procedure to quantify the transition time window from novice to experienced drivers. Each of the novice drivers' groups was compared against the highly experienced drivers. Based on the overall results and careful observation of descriptive statistics, the study concluded that after five years of driving experience young drivers' visual search pattern can be considered comparable to their experienced counterparts.Item Driving in a simulator versus on-road : the effect of increased mental effort while driving on real roads and a driving simulator(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2015) Mueller, Jessica Anne; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Laura StanleyThe objective of this thesis is to study human response to increased workload while driving in a driving simulator compared to real world behavior. Driving simulators are a powerful research tool, providing nearly complete control over experimental conditions-- an ideal environment to quantify and study human behavior. However, participants are known to behave differently in a driving simulator than in an actual real-world scenario. The same participants completed both on-road and virtual drives of the same degree of roadway complexity, with and without a secondary task conditions. Data were collected to describe how the participants' vehicle-handling, gaze performance and physiological reactions changed relative to increases in mental workload. Relationships between physiology and performance identified physiological, performance, and gaze-related metrics that can show significant effects of driving complexity, environment, and task. Additionally, this thesis explores the inadequacy of multinomial predictive models between the simulator and instrumented vehicle. Relative validity is established in the performance-physiology relationship for on- and off-road fixation frequencies, but few correlations between the simulator and instrumented vehicle are apparent as mental workload increases. These findings can be applied to the real world by providing specific variables that are adequate proxies to detect changes in driver mental workload in on-road driving situations; valuable for in-vehicle driver assistance system research. Overall, the simulator was a suitable proxy to detect differences in mental workload in driving task; and initial steps have been taken to establish validity, and to supplement on-road driving research in these high-demand driving scenarios.Item The effect of simulation attributes on driver perception and behavior(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering, 2010) Durkee, Shaun Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Nicholas WardTransportation systems in today's world are complex, diverse, and dangerous. Drivers execute many tasks in order to safely and efficiently maneuver their vehicles in these systems. Evaluation of vehicle speed (ego motion) and inter-vehicle distance (egocentric distance) are crucial skills and constant demands while operating a motor vehicle. Common maneuvers such as braking, obstacle avoidance, and overtaking rely heavily on such skills. Driving skills and transportation safety concerns in general have been studied over the years by many research methodologies. One such methodology, the driving simulator, has emerged as a leading research tool to help understand driver behavior and mitigate traffic safety concerns. The overall effectiveness of driving simulation as a research tool is linked to how accurately modern technology can model reality. Therefore determining how valid simulators are in representing reality is a chief concern among researchers, as validity ensures accuracy and credibility of research efforts. Simulation validity is established both physically and behaviorally. The objective of this project was to conduct a driving simulator experiment to examine the perceptual and behavioral effects of various parameters of the simulation deemed relevant from theories of ego motion. Twenty drivers completed speed and following distance perception tasks (absolute production, fixed-increase production, and ratio production) while driving through rural road scenarios that varied in the presentation of motion, field of view, and optic flow. Tasks and dependent variables assessed driver perception of speeds (25-65 MPH) and following distances (150-300 ft) common in everyday driving. The study concluded that field of view (FOV) and optic flow simulation parameters were significant to the perception of absolute speed, with high levels of each parameter (large FOV, high optic flow) resulting in more accurate perception than low levels (small FOV, low optic flow). Also, participants perceived a high level of field of view as significantly more natural than a low level of field of view. The results of this study will add to the existing simulator body of knowledge and will also allow the researchers to quantify the relative importance of simulation parameters as a basis for future behavioral validation of the driving simulator.