Advances in Human Aspects of Transportation

Lane changes (LCs) are highly complex, therefore the announcement and anticipation at an early stage of these maneuvers is important for traffic safety. Since manual drivers mainly apply implicit driving cues, automated vehicles (AVs) need to be able to detect and apply these cues to enhance the acceptance of AVs and therefore exploit the benefits of automation. The current study aimed at identifying typical communication cues and prototypical sequence patterns that announce prospective LCs at an early stage. In total, N = 298 LCs were annotated in video recordings of a real-world driving data set. The analysis revealed the turn indicator and the vehicles’ lateral movement towards the target lane as the most frequently and initially applied communication cues to announce LCs. The identified driving cues could be used by AVs to announce and anticipate prospective LCs at an early stage and therefore enhance traffic safety and efficiency.

This literature review is part of the “Improvement the ability of action of HZS JMK (fire brigade of the South Moravian region) - use the truck driving simulator in research, training and evaluation of driving behavior during driving a fire truck with active blue lights” project funded by Technology agency of the Czech Republic.The work on this paper included a literature review of topics related to driving simulator training programs, primarily those published within the past two decades (2000–2020) and focused on truck and emergency service drivers. Acceptance of the program by participants was high, indications for the effectiveness of driver simulators for training have been found. Several research questions may need to be answered, particularly questions related to the level of realism, the predictive validity of driving simulators, simulator sickness, simulator-to-reality transfer of learning, and assessment of objective measures of driving performance. Despite the above mentioned limitations, the following article will present key problems solutions and evidence of positive results of simulator-based training.

The fatality rate in Wrong-Way Driving (WWD) crashes is 12 times greater than all other roadway crash types. Recently, WWD countermeasures that provide alerts of oncoming wrong-way vehicles to “right-way” drivers are gradually being implemented across the US. Using a driving simulator, this study examined the behavior/performance of “right-way” drivers during a WWD event; and subsequently seeks to evaluate the potential effectiveness of an ITS countermeasure that targets the driver in the legal direction of travel. Findings showed that, overall; the use of an overhead dynamic message sign (DMS) “wrong-way warning” system can prevent fatal WWD crashes and/or reduce their severity. The likelihood for a “right-way” driver to avoid an oncoming WWD is 19.4 times greater when they are provided a DMS alert. Participants demonstrated use of lower brake force; indicating they were cautious as they approached the WWD. Even among participants that did collide with the WWD, their collision velocities were lower.

This study is part of a project aiming at analyzing driving behavior and the factors that most influence the generation of states of fatigue and distraction, which represent one of the main risk factors for road accidents. Both states are influenced by the possible condition of sleepiness linked to circadian rhythms. The global aim is to ascertain whether and how the mechanisms underlying the states of fatigue and distraction can be correlated with the variables describing the relationship between driver, road and vehicle. To this end, data related to driver physiological variables (EEG) and data on the scenario offered by the road, were recorded. Statistical differences between variables related to two different scenarios (Urban and Suburban) were calculated and also correlation between physiological and vehicles variables were enlightened. The first results are promising in terms of using physiological variables as risk indicators and improving the support offered by ITS systems.

Commercial vehicles, such as trucks, feature a high number of vehicle functions that can lead to complex driving workplaces. To minimize driver workload and dangerous distractions, a literature review identified approaches for reducing the complexity of truck cockpit. In addition to a discussion of the resulting reduction methods such as function automation and multimodal controls, we propose a novel approach: the use of context-adaptive controls. The applicability of this approach to the domain of commercial vehicles was explored through user research consisting of qualitative interviews and a subsequent quantitative survey among truck drivers. The authors identified occurring situations during the workday of truck drivers, which are referred to as “working phases”. Furthermore, the relevance of vehicle functions was found to be significantly influenced by the current working phase. The results suggest a high potential of context adaptive systems for reducing the complexity of truck cockpits. Further exploration of such a system in future research is therefore advised.

In 2019, around 29,000 child in Germany were injured in road accidents. The cohorts with the most accident associated victims were in their 11 to 14 year old. For this reason, the target group’s behavior of those who were injured was examined for different traffic situations, which can occur during transport to or from schools. The identified peculiarities could in turn serve as an orientation for the design of traffic instructions and help reduce safety risks. Different traffic situations were chosen for the analysis, thefore collected data could serve practical purposes. In total, 3,096 road users were recorded in 17 different traffic situations. Overall, every road user caused on average 0.06 traffic conflicts and committed 1.3 errors per traffic situation. The most commonly identified riding errors were missing hand signals, not looking around correctly when turning, and using the pavement on the wrong side.

Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs causes annually many serious road accidents. In the Czech Republic, there is a number of social workers and psychologist who are dealing with people that have problems with substance abuse. So we ask those professionals whether and how they discuss the topic of DUI and whether it is a part of the psychotherapeutic intervention with their clients. The aim of this work was to find out whether professionals working with substance abuse come across the topic of DUI and how they work with this topic (interventions, therapeutic techniques, recommendation). In case they find out client's misconduct what is their procedure. We conducted semi-structured interviews, these interviews were transcribed, and the text was analyzed by using interpretative phenomenological analysis. We approached all major organizations working with substance abuse in the Czech Republic. One person from each institute was self-selected for interview. Professionals we approached stated that they come across the DUI topic rarely and they don't try to work on this topic with the client. Clients tend to ignore the risks of DUI and possible penalties. When the professionals notice that their client is repeatedly involved in DUI they have conflicting tendencies because they should inform the authorities, but they do not. They do not want to harm their relationship with the client and partly support DUI in their clients as it is very difficult to find a job and then get rid of addiction without driving. We recommend a systematic change that would allow putting this blind spot right by using a different approach in these organizations.

Road transport still accounts for 21% of CO2 emissions in the European Union, which is why it is necessary to take a closer look at its causes in view of climate change. Commuting to the workplace or educational institution plays a decisive role, accounting for around a quarter of all journeys. While absolute figures for commuting are available in detail, knowledge about motives for commuting and a holistic view in combination with people's perception of the workplace and the place of residence has so far only been available in rudimentary form. The present paper is an initial step in this direction and relates user perception and evaluation criteria to commute length and mode of transportation used. It was shown that while the evaluation criteria for mode choice are relatively universal, the perception of commuting depends on the means of transportation (public transportation more negative) and the length of the commute. In contrast, current perceptions of the workplace and place of residence had no influence. Further, the view of commuting was positive regardless of all factors considered.

Automated systems of partially automated vehicles are able to perform the driving task, but can give back the driver all controls in specific conditions. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an Indicator of Proximity to the Limits of Assistance (IPLA) to anticipate transitions of control. The study was performed online, presenting videos representing situations in which assistance deactivated. A classical interface was compared to an IPLA dedicated to peripheral vision. Participants decided which action to perform. The results revealed that the participants who had the IPLA performed more actions before the system deactivated and expressed greater psychological comfort than the participants with the classic interface. The participants with the IPLA performed less appropriated actions and the IPLA was rated as more cognitively demanding. These results highlight the pertinence of integrating an IPLA dedicated to peripheral vision, but should not encourage the driver to deactivate assistance when not necessary.

This study explores retrospective data from a driver monitoring system (DMS) to analyze the driving time until the occurrence of drowsiness among commercial drivers. The database includes 1,121 driving records (trips) obtained from fleet vehicles belonging to six different companies. The time to the first drowsiness alert emitted by the DMS was modeled using a hazard-based duration model with a Weibull distribution and random parameters, considering the effects of trip duration and company-specific dummy variables. The results show that the probability of occurrence of the first drowsiness event increases with time, although it increases at different rates from one company to another. Then, company effects, such as the activity sector and fleet management policies, may play an important role in the development of driver drowsiness.

Traffic accidents are one of the major factors that lead to fatalities in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia. The behavior of drivers and their safety-related attitudes and culture are major factors that lead to traffic accidents. This study aimed to examine the effects of drivers’ safety behaviors, safety attitudes, and safety culture on driving performance among Saudis. A structural equation model was used to analyze the data. A self-completion questionnaire was used to assess these factors and was carried out from October 2019 to February 2020. In total, 1036 participants (58% male and 42% female) older than 18 participated in this study. The results showed that the effects of safety behaviors, safety attitudes, and safety culture on driving performance were significant (P < 0.05). Drivers’ safety attitudes did not directly influence driving performance (P = 0.23), whereas they indirectly influenced safety behavior. Safety behavior and safety culture significantly affected safety performance (P < 0.01 and P = 0.021, respectively). The driver safety behaviors and attitudes of females were significantly different from those of males. Males received more traffic violations and penalties than females did. The findings suggest that improving driver safety attitudes and risk behaviors and cultivating a safety culture among Saudis is required to increase their risk perception, which can lead to decreased traffic violations and accidents.

Multiple studies show the benefits to biking safety of the use of helmets, but opponents to Bicycle Helmet Laws claim that a mandate on helmet usage would discourage cycling, therefore nullifying the advantages of helmet usage. It has been in fact shown that increasing the number of bicycle riders on the roads improves overall safety. At the end of 2019, however, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended the introduction of all-ages helmet laws to reduce fatalities involving cyclists. The goal of this research is to identify sociodemographic characteristics and cycling behaviors that are associated with the use and non-use of bicycle helmets among adults using statistical analysis of data collected via a survey questionnaire distributed in California, USA. The statistical analysis of data collected from adult participants in California helps to understand the relationship between adult cyclists’ sociodemographic factors and helmet-wearing behavior.

Motor vehicle accidents in Malaysia have shown an increment trend involving multiple-vehicle crashes. Different frontal crash configurations may result in different levels of injury severity. This study aims to analyze the injury pattern of the driver focusing on multiple-vehicle frontal crashes. Police reported accident cases from 2015–2019 were obtained from Royal Malaysia Police. The frontal crashes were recorded under full-width & offset as well as sideswipe configurations. The injuries were categorized under fatal, severe injury, injury, and no injury. 7232 drivers meet the selection criteria. The most frequent injury sustained by fatal drivers was multiple body parts injury for both configurations. The chi-square test was used to study the association between the crash configuration and injury severity category. The p-values of less than 0.05 imply a significant effect between frontal crash configuration and injury severity category. Based on the calculated odds ratio, full-width & offset configuration is 5.70 more likely to fatal than sideswipe.

Driving safely on a university campus is critical. Cell phone use while driving is considered unsafe and can increase the risk of traffic crashes. The purpose of this study is to measure the rate of cell phone use while driving on campus in a major university in the United States. The overall rate of cell phone use was estimated at 2.5%. This rate is not considered high compared to previously measured rates in the United States. The cell phone use rate among faculty and staff drivers (3.5%) was higher in comparison with the student drivers (2.1%). The results indicate that there is a need for more interventions to reduce this dangerous behavior on campus, and several solutions were proposed.

Close following on highway can often be dangerous and lead to safety-critical situations. The escalation of criticality may vary depending on several operating factors, including roadway conditions, braking capabilities, visibility, and drivers’ reaction time. We analyzed nearly 2 million miles of naturalistic truck data to study truck driver following behavior. Truck drivers were seen to typically follow other vehicles with a headway of less than 2 s, which is equivalent to 50 m if the truck is traveling at a speed of 55 mph. Such small following distance may be dangerous during an unexpected events. Hence, we used formal methods to simulate such unexpected “what-if” situations by varying parameters from driving scenarios and analyze safety from a theoretical point of view, referred to as Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS). Our simulation shows that interstate driving scenarios often violates RSS safety conditions and may lead to safety-critical events.

An advanced driver-assistance system is developed, in which the conventional steering wheel and brake pedal are replaced by a novel human-machine interface using surface electromyography (sEMG) electrodes attached to the driver’s muscles, and this paper is dedicated to braking control assistance. In the first part, how the sEMG signals are measured is presented, then the signals are analyzed in the frequency and time domain to determine the noise they contain, and signal processing using optimal linear Wiener filtering (finite impulse response) is proposed and compared with two other methods. In the second part, using deep learning for detecting whether the driver is braking the vehicle is discussed, where the authors present the steps of preparing the data sets, extracting time-series features, and training a long short-term memory network. Lastly, the potential of applying the proposed deep learning method online, i.e., while the vehicle is in use, is analyzed.

Rear-end crashes are one of the most common types of road accidents. A road traffic accident resulted from the combination of factors related to the few components of the system involving driver, vehicle, work zone, and the interaction between those systems. This study aimed to investigate the contributing factors affecting the severity of single-vehicle rear-end crash in Malaysia. The primary database from 2015–2018 used in this study was gathered from Bukit Aman Traffic Investigation and Enforcement (JSPT), the department under The Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) Pol 27. Unique risk factors associated with each of the vehicle types were identified using logistic regression models. The results showed that four variables are significantly affecting the severity of rear-end crashes. The type of vehicle and vehicle part damage are categorized as vehicle characteristics; while the speed limit and the crash zone are related to work zone characteristics. The findings of this study are anticipated to benefit local authorities in taking pro-active actions to prevent and attenuate the severity of road accidents.

In a crowdsourced experiment, the effects of distance and type of the approaching vehicle, traffic density, and visual clutter on pedestrians’ attention distribution were explored. 966 participants viewed 107 images of diverse traffic scenes for durations between 100 and 4000 ms. Participants’ eye-gaze data were collected using the TurkEyes method. The method involved briefly showing codecharts after each image and asking the participants to type the code they saw last. The results indicate that automated vehicles were more often glanced at than manual vehicles. Measuring eye gaze without an eye tracker is promising.

This study investigated the effect of age and driving experience on driving performance with automated vehicles. Participants performed a detection task while driving an automated vehicle in a simulator. Reaction time and accuracy were recorded as the driving performance. Results showed a moderate positive correlation between age and reaction time, between driving experience and reaction time. However, no significant difference in driving performance was found between different age groups and different driving experience groups. The results should provide insights to future studies about the effect of human factors in automated vehicles.

Frequent cycling is environment-sparing and health-promoting. Therefore, bicycle-use for commuting should be increased by developing infrastructure according to cyclists’ demands. Using a mixed-method approach, we first identified cyclist types by stated preferences regarding cycling infrastructure. Two types of commuters could be distinguished: foremost fast and safe and fast cyclists.Second, the cyclists rated their last commuter trip as well as alternatives to their chosen route based on the dimensions safety, comfort, and efficiency. Contrary to expectations, the evaluation of routes chosen and avoided alternatives found no differences between these cyclist types – both types made similar decisions. The dimension of efficiency turned out to be most relevant to the route choice decision making of both groups of commuting bicyclists.When cycling is not a leisure activity but serves commuting, this should be reflected in infrastructure with fast cycling and short cycling routes, for increased efficiency is of relevance to all types of commuting cyclists.

Owing to population explosions, many developing cities are experiencing rapid and chaotic urbanization processes filled with undefined urban transport systems that can’t respond to the growing demand. This study aims at examining how Street-infrastructure supports and encourages NMT in Developing cities. The survey highlights the role of the ‘Walkability’ mode of mobility in developing cities where most individuals still have no access to public transport. The study used a roadway characteristic-based model to assess the Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) for Kampala urban city center. The survey identified that Kampala city street-facilities caters less towards pedestrian safety. Most studies focus on NMT in cities from developed countries, and no previous studies have used LOS tools to measure ‘Pedestrian’ facilities in Uganda in particular. Therefore, the findings of this investigation would contribute to the scientific community by bridging the cross-cultural mobility-related literature gap.

The automotive industry faces a broad variety of different challenges, especially with regard to HMI development. One significant lever for improvement is optimizing the applied processes during development. In order to identify the exact challenges relevant for HMI development and to find requirements for an ideal HMI development approach, 15 semi-structured expert interviews are conducted. By that, a total of 274 challenges and 101 requirements are identified, consolidated into a set of 17 clusters with 54 sub-clusters. Thereby, a foundation for future process optimization is set.

This paper is a case study reporting on a series of design sprints carried out by three master students of Université catholique de Louvain in the context of a 3-month internship which took place in a company whose core-business is the automotive industry. Design sprint refers to an iteration of the design thinking (DT) process. The goal of the internship was to test-and-refine prototypes for road sign assistance and adaptive cruise-control technology. The design sprints involved methods such as survey research, field observation, customer journey mapping, six hats, video prototyping, and user tests. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) render an account on how an industrial organization implements DT: from the processes that are executed to the selection of supporting methods to the use of the DT outcomes within the organization; (2) investigate whether and how the outcomes of such design sprints are being evaluated, questioned or criticized.

In this study, driving behaviors were observed for a sample of 42 participants, ages 18–55 years, in the presence and absence of the Dynamic Speed Harmonization (DSH) and Emergency Electronic Brake Lights (EEBL) connected vehicle applications. Overall, drivers’ behaviors seemed to be positively and significantly influenced by these applications, with drivers staying more focused on the roadway, maintaining speeds more closely distributed around the posted speed limit, reacting to incidents with braking responses that were lower in intensity and less erratic, recovering from incidents with acceleration responses that were harder and less erratic, and maintaining higher TTCs. These changes are indicative of desirable behaviors that should promote string stability of platoons, provide speed-related consistency that should reduce the possibility for incidents to occur, and elicit more appropriate responses when an incident does occur. These findings provide empirical support to the often-cited claim that CVs will improve safety and mobility.

This study considers a situation where the driver interacts with the vehicle’s ADAS (SAE level 1/2) by joystick device. Two conditions, the driver using joystick for performing lateral control and automatic lane change function have been considered in this study. The purpose of this study is 1. to investigate the driver’s behavior for evaluate the availability and driving difficulty of the joystick as a candidate for interaction device.; 2. to investigate the driver’s acceptance using the joystick for performing the function. 25 elderly drivers participated in this experiment. The driving simulator simulated the highway scenario. This study concludes that depending on the joystick function, the joystick may be an interaction device of choice. For example, it is recommended as an intermediate device for sharing control with ADAS such as performing the automatic lane change function. The result supported that low accident occurred when they use the joystick to control the vehicle in the first time. Also, the driver subjective feel that the difficulty is low.

Drivers often rely on navigation systems and traffic alerts to anticipate the road events ahead, such as obstacles, accidents, and roadworks. We designed simple road situation alerts using visual, speech, and auditory modalities to warn drivers about upcoming road events. The prototype was tested with a driving simulator and evaluated with elderly drivers. In this study, we evaluated drivers’ subjective trust, cognitive workload, and situational awareness in three experimental conditions. We also collected electrocardiograms to measure the workload and stress as a response to the stimuli. Results show that visual warnings were difficult to notice and distractive. Speech and sound combination resulted in the lowest cognitive load, highest trust while maintaining the highest situational awareness. Both speech and visual warnings reduced distrust compared to the baseline. The weather did not affect any of the subjective measures. The physiological analysis showed that visual warnings induce lower stress compared to speech warning alerts. Speech alerts enabled the highest situational awareness.

This study investigated the use of user-configurable displays for integrating multiple channels of information for drivers of future driving automation systems. The study measured the performance of drivers completing visual-manual secondary tasks on an in-vehicle display while driving a sedan during emulated traffic scenarios. Participants from two distinct age groups (20–35 and 50–65) experienced an expert-determined configuration in addition to their own participant-determined configuration across counterbalanced trials. Objective measures included task times and total eye-glance times. Subjective measures included preference configuration types. User configurability resulted in lower levels of visual distraction, thereby offering a potential safety benefit relative to a preconfigured system. However, though this study demonstrates a performance improvement, configurability may also encourage users to frequently interact with displays despite concurrently being responsible for performing the dynamic driving task.

The use of a head-up-display has been extensively researched in the context of two track vehicles, human system interaction and improved road safety. The aim of this study is to measure workload and response time for a secondary task while riding a powered-two-wheeler. For this purpose, a head mounted smart glasses device was used to provide driving information. A secondary task was implemented for comparison with a conventional digital information display in the motorcycle segment. The focus was to determine the “response time”, “response rate”, “mental workload”, “obtrusiveness” and “usefulness” for both displays. During the 15-min ride, the secondary task consisted of confirming the perception of a direction change in the navigation arrows. The mental workload was measured using the rider-activity-load-index questionnaire and compared between both displays. The results show a lower workload using the head-up-display and a faster response time and frequency fulfilling the secondary task. Usefulness depends on the shown information, which should be further investigated.

Although ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) is improving and becoming nearly from automatic to autonomous, inconsistency between the system’s behavior and human driver’s understanding of the system can easily lead to automation surprises. To avoid such cases, the effect of supporting driver’s prediction of system behavior is investigated in this study. An effect of presenting predictive information to a driver earlier before hazardous events was studied by a driving simulation experiment and the result suggests that such early information is used for raising attention and or a cue for reaction depending on both timing of information presentation and a type of an event.

Human-machine interface (HMI) is valued as a medium for information interaction between the digital cockpit and the driver, and simulated driving evaluation is an important method for assessing in-vehicle HMI. It is worth exploring how to select appropriate behavioral indicators for evaluation analysis and design iterations. The study selected six secondary tasks for HMI evaluation using touch screen interaction under a constant speed straight road driving scenario. Vehicle indicators including vertical and horizontal control and behavioral indicators related to the secondary tasks were collected. By performing stepwise regression analysis on the data from 26 participants, some behavioral indicators that have an impact on driving performance were extracted to provide suggestions for the simulation experimental evaluation and HMI design optimization iterations.

The charging network is currently still perceived as a barrier to e-vehicle adoption, even though the vehicles could contribute to climate protection. To plan the necessary mobility infrastructure according to demand, a profound knowledge of car charging and refueling in general is of crucial importance. For a holistic picture, the present paper compares the refueling and charging behavior for cars with the replenishment of household goods and the recharging of smartphones. It was found that while refill behavior was quite similar across all contexts, there were some minor differences. Thus, in the household context, higher fill levels were already regarded as a critical residual quantity and repurchased earlier. In addition, household supplies tend to be replenished every now and then, while smartphone and car contexts are dominated by “all or nothing” strategies. Conditions directly related to fill level typically trigger refills rather than financial or habitual reasons. Regarding user factors, weak effects were found in particular for the personal need for structure, reliability, impulsivity, and willingness to take risks. Factors such as household size, the number of children in the household, or the distance to the nearest supermarket were also related to filling levels perceived as critical and thus triggering refilling processes.

Wireless charging could facilitate the transition from diesel powered taxis to low/zero emission alternatives. The WiCET project aims to install five wireless chargers and retrofit nine taxis with wireless power transfer (WPT) capabilities, to study the impacts of enabling smaller but more frequent in-rank charging. Semi-structured interviews with 8 taxi drivers from Nottingham, UK were run. The results found that all drivers were in favour of in-rank wireless charging, citing the convenience and potential to complete more fares. Furthermore, most drivers recommended placing the chargers sequentially and away from the front of the taxi rank, to maximise their charging time (when the minority of vehicles are WPT-enabled). This study provides evidence for wireless charging as an enabler of electric taxis in medium-sized cities, such as Nottingham, as well as provide insights into the practical realities of installing in-rank wireless chargers and highlights areas for future study.

The use of electric mopeds is expected to result in shorter travel times. The objective of this work was to study the possibility of modelling a heterogenous flow consisting of passenger vehicles and electric mopeds in SUMO simulation tool. Three typical urban links have been considered and a microscopic model analysis was performed for a mixed flow of passenger vehicles and electric mopeds for each link. Two different car-following models available in SUMO and the SUMO sublane model were used to simulate the observed behavior of mopeds riders to drive between lanes or to drive in parallel on a single lane. The findings show that the two car-following models derive different simulation results for the yielding lanes of unsignalized four-leg intersections. Proper calibration of existing SUMO models and future observational studies are needed to refine the models and to prepare guidelines.

In this paper, we investigated public acceptance of Light Electric Vehicles (EL-Vs) using data collected from 39,795 trips of 4 different types of 225 EL-Vs’ real usage and 9,820 questionnaires, within the one year long demonstrations of the ELVITEN EU project in six cities. Data consist of users’ perceptions and attitudes collected via questionnaire surveys before, during and after the demonstrations; trip data obtained using data loggers installed on the EL-Vs and usage data collected from the project’s ICT tools. The research approach followed to explore the human factors that affect users’ behavioral intention to use EL-Vs as well as to boost their acceptance and wide deployment is based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) and consists of 3 phases. Initially, the design and implementation of the ELVITEN ICT components has been conducted by mapping the UTAUT2 constructs into their functionalities and the effect of all the constructs in relation with these components on the Use Behavior has been examined. At the second stage, in order to study the impact of the demonstrations on the acceptance of EL-Vs, appropriate measures have been selected for each of the UTAUT2 constructs, and the calculation methodology was determined. At the later stage, the model has been validated, the analysis carried out and the hypotheses set has been tested and validated.

When driving a conditionally automated vehicle, a haptic signal might be an option in order to facilitate the TOR, since the driver’s visual and acoustic modalities may be occupied by non-driving related tasks. Therefore, the driver’s seat rotation is examined here as haptic cue in the TOR since, so far, it has not been considered in detail, yet. The turning seat actively turns the driver away from the driving task in AD mode. The modified seating position during AD is intended to support the driver’s Mode Awareness. In the case of a TOR, the driver receives a kinesthetic cue by applying a torque around the vertical axis of his seat, turning him back to the driving task. To investigate the turning seat, a preliminary expert study was conducted. Results show that drivers prefer an eccentric vertical turning axis which leads to a rotation away from the steering wheel.

Who is to blame when autonomous vehicles are involved in accidents? We report findings from an online study in which the attribution of blame and trust were measured from 206 participants who studied 18 hypothetical vignettes portraying traffic incidents under different driving environments. The focal vehicle involved in the incident was either controlled by a human driver or autonomous system. The accident severity also varied from near miss, minor accident to major accident. Participants applied double standards when assigning blame to humans and autonomous systems: an autonomous system was usually blamed more than a human driver for executing the same actions under the same circumstances with the same consequences. These findings not only have important implications to AI-related legislation, but also highlight the necessity to promote the design of robots and other automation systems which can help calibrate public perceptions and expectations of their characteristics and capabilities.

Working and being productive while commuting and travelling is a promising use case for automated and autonomous vehicles. Whereas different concepts have already been proposed how future interior concepts can support in-car work, user requirements for this use case were not investigated in detail. An online survey with n = 618 participants from all age groups between 18 and 65 years was used to investigate users’ perception and requirements for doing work in an autonomous, on-demand vehicle. The results show a high acceptability for the possibility to work during travel time. Many users expect that the vehicle provides infrastructure and equipment for working to be used with a mobile device. Privacy options are an important aspect for user satisfaction and should be considered for the design of shared vehicles. Based on the results, interior concepts supporting in-car work can be conceptualized and investigated in further research.

A development of fully autonomous-driving vehicle is approaching towards the more utilization of time in vehicle aiming at various purposes such as entertainment and relaxation. To achieve such purposes, it is necessary to provide a comfortable environment in the vehicle. Therefore, the goal of this study is to realize a new method to evaluate the comfort focusing on the interior space of the autonomous vehicle. We proposed an emotion map, to estimate and classify emotions by biological signal indexes. We performed an experiment to evaluate various scenarios with the simulated autonomous vehicle in which multimodal stimulus were presented. The experimental results indicated that the comfort increased during the autonomous driving. Therefore, we suggest that our proposed method is effective for evaluating the comfort for the interior of autonomous vehicle, and also applicable to other scenarios.

Automated driving is considered as a technological milestone that will significantly shape the automotive industry as well as mobility behavior. Besides aspects of increasing road safety and efficiency, the predicted advantages lie above all in free time for the user, as he becomes a passenger instead of a driver. Existing research assigns great potential to media usage in automated vehicles, but without reflecting a concrete context (e.g., availability of time or travelling situation). This research gap is addressed within this study by applying a cross industrial consumer survey that analyzes three different usage scenarios. The study examines which media offerings are preferred for different purposes and how contextual factors vary. The results show clear differences in the media choice, but also similarities regarding the projection of content as well as sound and light settings. A cluster analysis further indicates two differentiating target markets that differ in technological demands and individual innovativeness.

In the frame of AUTODRIVING Project addressing automation in the road system, a Focus Group (FG) study was planned and setup targeting the collection of data to be used in the definition of details for the experimental project phase: the tests on a driving simulator.Having followed the FG procedure and prepared every required methodological tool, the planned FG sessions were ready to start when the pandemic outbreak imposed a lockdown for several months, which led to plan remote FG sessions. Thus, the planned FG sessions have been converted into remote FG sessions. Furthermore, most of the previously selected participants couldn’t participate, and the methodological procedure had to be re-initiated according to the new conditions imposed by the COVID 19 lockdown situation.The FG results were poorer than expected but the methodology for FG remote sessions has been set up and improved as the researchers’ experience was increased.

In order to preserve the quality of life especially in rural communities, new mobility concepts have to be developed. Autonomous vehicles present a promising and cutting-edge technology. This study was conducted with rural citizens in Germany to gain an understanding of what services and missing infrastructure could possibly be provided by the use of autonomous busses. With an online questionnaire, N = 112 datasets were collected that surveyed among other aspects the perception of autonomous busses and the possible deployment in their region. It was found that the delivery of goods and using it themselves was preferred to the transport of family members. Furthermore, the main obstacle is the still immature technology and a lack of legal guidelines. The results are an important first step to introduce the technology in the future and offers necessary insights developers and different stakeholders.

With the development of automatic driving, the driver can be engaged in a variety of secondary driving tasks. But then comes the problem of taking over when we switch from autopilot mode to manual mode especially when we are in the secondary driving tasks. In the secondary driving task, the driver's body posture changes, and the accessibility also changes. How to guide the redesign of the cockpit control layouts and approaches through the study of the typical posture accessibility during the secondary driving task, so that the driver engaged in the secondary driving task can efficiently complete the task of take-over is the problem worth studying.This study hopes to work out a set of feasible research and design paths for the above problems through sorting out the existing researches on the accessibility in the secondary driving task.

In semi-autonomous driving, it requires drivers to take over driving under necessary situations. To take over driving safely, it is important to avoid accidents caused by the decrement of arousal level. Therefore, mechanism to increase and maintain arousal level is needed. To achieve satisfying safe driving, the increment of arousal level should be in comfortable state. Many studies presented evaluations of arousal level, but there is no evaluation of comfortable arousal. In this study, we objectively evaluated both arousal and comfort using brainwave and heart rate variability (HRV), proposed to analyze time-series data, and compared various biological indexes with subjective evaluation by correlation analysis. The result shows significant correlations between objective and subjective evaluation results for both comfort and arousal indexes. Time series analysis of pNN50 as HRV index and β/α as brainwave index, which were significantly correlated with SAM results, shows the possibility of evaluating comfort and arousal with those indexes.

Safety systems in vehicles had been implemented across many different car manufacturers to ensure the safety of the vehicle occupants. One of them include Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), automated systems that can prevent the impending crashes. This study, highlighted the perception of the vehicle occupants on AEB system. Thus, to measure the perceptions, an instrument was developed. The importance of content validity in the instrument psychometric and its relevance with reliability have made it an essential step in the instrument development. This article attempts to present the result of content validity ratios. A methodological study was conducted to examine a consumer-centred perception instrument's content validity on automatic emergency braking (AEB) through a two-step process (development and judgment). The first step involves determining the domain, sampling (item generation) and forming instruments. The second step involves determining the content validity ratio and content validity index. Expert panel suggestions were used to examine the face validity of the instrument. The content validity was determined for 83 items across ten constructs. The constructs developed include consumer trust (12 items), consumer expectation (6 items), confirmation (7 items), satisfaction (8 items), perceived performance (13 items), perceived usefulness (5 items), perceived ease of use (6 items), value for money (7 items) and complacent behaviour (9 items). The last construct is continuance intention to use (10 items). This article will illustrate the acceptance level of quantitative indices for the content validity of a new instrument. This article could be used as a reference for future studies in developing a new survey instrument.

In the future, cyclists will interact with highly automated vehicles (HAV) in urban mixed traffic, especially at junctions and intersections. Previous research focused on HAV interactions with pedestrians, whereas HAV interactions with cyclists are yet understudied. Therefore, we conducted two studies (video, cycling simulator) to examine how an HAV should behave in an interaction with cyclists. Specifically, we explored when cyclists want the HAV to start braking and how much perceived risk cyclists are willing to accept in HAV interactions. Results show that cyclists’ choice of braking onset of the HAV depended on the timing (ideal vs. last acceptable) and vehicle speed (30 km/h vs. 50 km/h). Subjective ratings showed that cyclists in both studies aim to avoid experiencing risk in HAV interactions but also accepted riskier interactions in the cycling simulator. The studies provide first insights into cyclists’ risk perception in an HAV interaction and contribute first ideas to the design of HAV driving behavior in the interaction with cyclists.

For SAE Level 3 of automated driving (AD), human drivers are considered as the potential fallback and are expected to take over the vehicle when the system issues a take-over request (TOR). Thus, the evaluation take-over performance with regards to driving safety is the key to designing Level 3 AD systems. This study discusses the influence of the relative position of surrounding traffic on drowsy drivers’ take-over performance. An parameter of the relative position, which is defined as the average of the shortest distances between the ego vehicle and the surrounding vehicles (ASDESV) was proposed. Through objective and subjective methods, the ASDESV was proved appropriate to evaluate the influence of the relative position of surrounding traffic on take-over performance and longer ASDESV was proved to conduce to better take-over performance. This study proved that the relative position of surrounding traffic had important effects on take-over performance and driving safety.

In urban areas short distances are often covered by car which puts a strain on emission levels and infrastructure. One reason is the transport of unwieldy objects. To avoid short trips by car, an (emission-free) alternative must be offered that supports the transport of such goods. Therefore, two concepts for an autonomous delivery robot for the use case shopping with different compartments structures and closing mechanisms were developed.Within a laboratory study, these two concepts were examined and compared to a shopping cart regarding their subjective and objective ergonomics. Additionally, participants' preferences were surveyed. The results indicate that the novel transport concepts were rated as good as or even significantly better than a shopping cart regarding subjective ergonomics and are preferred. Based on the objective data, however, optimisation needs were identified to further improve ergonomics. Notwithstanding, the new transport concepts have the potential to become environmentally friendly alternatives for mobility.

Inversions occur due to a complex system of energy exchange, geography, and weather patterns. Every winter in the Wasatch Front, Utah, air inversion traps air pollution from different sources causing nearly 2,000 premature deaths each year. The population in this region continues to grow and is predicted to double in the next thirty years. With a fast-growing population being forced to live in the relatively small space that the Wasatch Front region offers, managing the effects of the inversion becomes an important issue to be solved. One of the main sources of this pollution is emissions from vehicles. As the population grows, emissions being trapped by the inversion grow proportionally. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of winter inversion, the role of road transportation, and possible solutions to this problem. Several solutions were proposed, including increasing electric vehicle infrastructure, raising public awareness of air pollution and health threats, encouraging public transportation use, expanding telework programs, and promoting walking and cycling.

Urban population growth means that 66% of the population is expected to live in cities by 2050. A green, efficient rail service that minimizes delays, increases capacity and reduces overcrowding on trains and platforms will be an essential contributor to nations’ post-Covid, green recovery. Digitally Enhanced Advanced Services (DEAS) are one way to help improve performance, maximize productive capacity and open additional revenue streams. Therefore, investigations are needed into how digital technologies can enhance business model design, thus impacting how business capabilities, engineering functions and human factors can be combined to improve performance and user experience within rail transport systems. This paper explores how deploying green and energy efficient rail travel as a DEAS could be an ideal solution to bridge the gap between efficiency and capacity. We also consider how service-based contracts may enable user experience to be put at the forefront of post-Covid rail services.

The rapid development of autonomous driving technology made it possible to implement autonomous buses (ABs) for public passenger transport. Previous work has shown that for passengers, different autonomous driving scenarios will produce different information expectations. Passengers will have more information needs for unexpected autonomous driving scenarios. And the provision of relevant information can mitigate these negative effects of unexpected behavior. Nevertheless, it remains unclear in which conditions are unexpected scenarios for passengers of ABs, and what information expectations are for different scenarios. Through a semi-structured field qualitative study of 10 passengers, we have obtained seven factors that affect the HMI experience of ABs. Three unexpected scenarios and four reasons why the unexpected scenarios affect the passenger experience are identified. And passengers' expectations of different HMI information for normal and unexpected autonomous driving scenarios. Based on the above results, we proposed HMI information design recommendations for ABs.

Qatar, a developing country in the Middle East, is investing in developing its first smart city. Lusail City is a world-class urban development city that has been newly introduced in Qatar to serve the country’s national vision, support rapid population growth, improve the quality of life for its citizens, and showcase the capabilities of the country to the rest of the world. The city incorporates a smart transportation system that includes a smart road network, light rail transit, bicycle and pedestrian network, parking facilities, water taxi transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations. This paper describes the smart transportation system in the city, challenges facing the system, and lessons that can benefit other developing countries in building similar systems.

Currently, thousands of people move around the world using urban transport, which is the primary means of transportation between small and large cities. This work aims to analyze public transport in the ergonometric concept. Through analyses and studies in numerous scientific articles in the area, we understand and apply an innovative metric and methodology, thus analyzing the temperature, noise, the number of people inside the public transport, the speed of the means of transportation, and the average time that people wait for the arrival of the vehicle. It is important to note that these data align with the ergonomic comfort of a public transport population. This study was carried out in Campinas, located in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil.

Over the last decades there has been a steady increase in digitalized products, applications and services introduced to ship’s bridges with the intent to reduce workload and increase safety. However, new technology come with unexpected effects. The current study involves data collected from field trips on board five ships and semi-structured interviews with 21 seafarers. The results show that the human-technology interaction on ship bridges still is a challenge for the seafarers. However, the seafarers see it as part of their professional role to manage and adapt to the equipment or system they have at hand to get the job done. In this paper this ability to handle and make sense of technology is analysed through the notion of seamanship. To find ways to reduce the gap between technology-as-used and technology-as-designed future research should be directed towards the many stakeholders involved in ship bridge design.

The important ship navigation systems radar and ECDIS (Electronic Chart Display and Information System) offer a large amount of both route monitoring and collision avoidance functionalities to navigators. We conducted an online survey to investigate if navigators really need all functionalities assuming that route monitoring functionalities are mainly needed on ECDIS and collision avoidance functionalities are mainly needed on radar systems. N = 80 experienced nautical officers completed the online survey and evaluated the functionalities according to their importance and their frequency of use. As expected, the need for functionalities was task dependent, indicating that functionalities on ECDIS and radar systems should be prioritized accordingly. Thus, the results of this survey can be used to guide display design of modern ECDIS and radar systems by considering user needs.

The intention of this paper is to present some identified tasks for Human Factors and design research within the area om Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS). It targeted for the research project SFI AutoShip at NTNU in Trondheim but might also be of some general interest for the HF and design community within the maritime domain. The research areas deal with human-automation interaction as it might manifest itself between operators and the human-machine interface in the Remote Operation Centre (ROC), between autonomous and conventional ships at sea and between crews of partly manned ships and the automation. Eight research tasks have been identified and are presented in this paper.

Non-technical skills (NTS) training is an important part of frontline operator training across many high-risk domains. Within maritime education and training (MET), NTS are trained as part of Maritime Resource Management (MRM) courses. MRM represents the maritime adaptation of the original crew resource management training from the aviation domain. While the ambition of resource management training is to enhance team performance, research reports a strong focus on the assessment and measurement of NTS on an individual level, not always taking the team as unit of analysis into concern. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to a critical discussion of the relationship between NTS and team performance. It explores how to potentially analyze the relationship between NTS and experiences of operational resilience an presents an attempt to operationalize NTS and resilience cornerstones (REC) in a questionnaire for maritime trainees. While the questionnaire focuses on the maritime domain, the lessons learned from the construction of items may guide the development of further operationalization in other high-risk domains.

The operating system of the confined compartment of the ship is limited by the working environment, and the external environment cannot be seen. The visual environment of the centralized control cabin is even worse due to factors such as dense personnel and more equipment. Effectively controlling the visual environment of the ship’s centralized control cabin and providing a comfortable working environment for the crew is an important indicator of the overall performance of the ship. This research aims to analyse how the theory of habitability supports the design of the environment of the centralized control cabin of ships, focusing on the recent years of habitability in the special environment of ships on human physiological performance and subjective response. The research method puts forward the design method of closed cabin habitability system (IUS). The research can provide a theoretical basis for the effective development of the habitability design of the centralized control cabin of ships and can also provide a reference for the human factors design of other closed cabins.

The ship centralized control cabin is an important node for manoeuvring and control. It is composed of a large number of display and control components and has a complex structure. A reasonable visual design of the centralized control cabin can provide operators with a good vision and a pleasant environment, which will help them to give full play to their work efficiency. According to the operation process of the crew in the ship centralized control cabin, the visual behaviour of the crew in the ship centralized control cabin and the factors that affect the visual behaviour of the crew are deeply analysed, and the visual behaviour of the crew in the ship centralized control cabin and its mechanism are constructed. This study can provide a theoretical basis for the effective development of the visual design of the ship’s centralized control cabin, as well as a reference for the design of other long-term enclosed and isolated environments.

In the existing maritime traffic flow simulation, the other ship follows the initially set route regardless of the movement of the own ship, so the interaction between the own ship and the other ship’s movement in the actual maritime traffic environments cannot be reflected. To solve this problem, we provide realistic simulation environments for maritime traffic analysis based on the agent-based ship officer’s behaviour model for MASS and microscopic simulation of traffic flow. In this paper, we developed the agent-based ship officer’s behaviour model, which attempts to capture the behavioural patterns of a ship officer during an instance of ship collision. The main function of the ship officer’s behaviour model is to receive the characteristics of the ship officer and the ship, to determine encounter situations and to transmit the initial response distance, alter course, and change speed according to the navigational expertise, navigational errors and VTS control to the ship navigation agent. In addition, to verify the behavior model, we conducted the agent-based simulation prototype for maritime traffic with ship officer’s behavior model. The results of this study will be used to develop maritime traffic simulation platform in a digital environment.

This paper discusses whether the ergonomic assessment of the man-machine interface of the ship console in virtual reality simulation system can achieve the effect similar to that in physical simulation system. The similarity of the two systems was verified by assessing the situation awareness level of the subjects. 9 subjects were recruited to participate in the comparative experiment of ship navigation tasks in two systems, which 13 tasks were designed under the three conditions. 10D-SART scale, situation awareness global assess technique (SAGAT), eye movement data and performance were used to assess the situation awareness of subjects. The results provided there is a high consistency and no significant difference among the indices between the virtual reality simulation system and the physical simulation system. Among these indices, the response or operation time and gaze entropy had the highest correlation between the two systems, and the correlation of condition 2 and condition 3 were all above 0.9. SART score and SAGAT score had the second highest correlation between the two systems, and the correlation in each working condition reached about 0.7. Under the influence of different conditions and different users, SART scores and SAGAT scores of the three conditions had no obvious change trend. The results show that the virtual reality simulation system can replace the physical simulation system to a certain extent in the assessment of the operator’s situation awareness. This method can be used for the scheme assessment in early stages of design to reduce the development costs greatly.

Training and development for air traffic controllers operating newer technology lack sufficient focus on situation awareness. The authors previously identified significant potential for efficiency and safety gains in operations with digitized technology involving Terminal Radar Approach Control and Tower Team air traffic control operators, and, that NextGen technology also revealed the potential for adverse effects on cognitive processing of operators. Collaborative teamwork was identified as essential for success in effectively using NextGen equipment and systems to optimize safety and efficiency, supported by simulation technology and specialized training applications. Applying cognitive overlays from their SHELL 2017 model, variants for TRACON and Tower Team studies were combined and evaluated to identify multiple issues with cognitive processing and critical factors influencing situational awareness and potential cognitive overload. To reduce potential for cognitive overload for controllers using NextGen technology, the authors propose a Controller Resource Management approach to improve situational awareness and teamwork.

Commercial space transportation is raising the number of space activities and space vehicles are increasingly traversing the civil airspace. During such activities, aircraft need to be protected from possible non-nominal events, particularly from those generating debris. To respond effectively to malfunctions operators and air navigation service provider (ANSP) need to collaborate and exchange operational data. In the data exchange project (DEP) the German Aerospace Center (DLR) cooperates with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to demonstrate such a data exchange. Based on the data exchange, DLR has developed a concept to visualize information at the controller working position (CWP). This enables the controller to initiate appropriate measures to protect aircraft from falling debris. The concept was implemented and evaluated at DLR’s Air Traffic Validation Center. The goal was to identify, if the information presented is the information required by controllers to manage the situation.

Transportation is constantly updating with new technologies and adapting for its users as they choose to use the new options that are being made. This study contributes knowledge on adaptation to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in planning and operating future airport landside facilities. It consists of five parts. The first part describes the facilities and their interaction. In part two, the requirements for adaptation to the CAV are defined. In part three, the role of advanced methods and technologies are identified for ensuring that users will receive their expected level of service and also the airport management will benefit from adaptation to CAVs. Part four describes the research framework and its components based on microscopic level investigation of level-of-service and capacity factors. Finally, in part five, conclusions are offered on obtaining beneficial results from the application of CAVs in the landside part of airports.

The global aviation industry is a cost-intensive and highly competitive business environment where there is constant pressure on airline managers to reduce costs and maximize profits. This is juxtaposed with the self-interests of organized labor union groups which can lead to poor industrial relations. This conflict can have adverse consequences as it has been shown that some workplace accidents can come from low morale along with friction between management and employees. The researchers first use the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) as forensic tool to analyze a previous accident where the HFACS was not used. This analysis proved that industrial relations between management and the pilots’ union was a possible contributing factor to the accident. Results from a survey of four major international airlines indicated that poor industrial relations between management and pilots are reflected in pilots’ general workplace motivation.

To increase capacity, the air transportation industry has shown interest in wake mitigation, with the goal of reducing the in-trail separation between leading and trailing aircraft operations. Wake vortex separation is a major impediment to this goal. Replacing the current, static wake separations with dynamic separations, based on airport fleet mix or environmental and aircraft factors, could increase airport and airspace capacity. This paper describes a research effort to locate, review, and summarize already developed or currently proposed dynamic wake mitigation separation concepts. This study also discusses the technical feasibility and implementation challenges of each concept, identifies possible research gaps, and proposes future research recommendations.

In the scope of InDiCaD (Innovative Digital Cabin Design), a project at German Aerospace Center (DLR), research has been done on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the willingness of the passengers to fly under the given circumstances. The research covers three scenarios; firstly, one where Covid-19 has left no traces, secondly one where the consequences are enormous and thirdly, one where the passengers are still willing to travel, albeit with an extra set of demands concerning their health. These scenarios were used to create a mission definition for the cabin of the future as well as to establish fictional persona’s, representing the passengers of the future. To conclude, couple of rough ideas resulting from the research is shown.

For large-scale manned spacecraft bound for the Moon and Mars, lighting should be explored that can reduce safety risks while increasing visual capability. The use of appropriate lighting in large-scale manned spacecraft can provide astronauts with a comfortable and safe living and working environment while reducing the energy consumption of the lighting equipment. Visual acuity is an important aspect of the quality of the light environment. It directly determines the human eye’s ability to discern details and has an important impact on visual ergonomics and the efficiency of receiving visual in-formation. In this study, we investigated changes in the human eye’s visual acuity in a simulated spacecraft environment under three illuminances. 18 healthy persons participated in the study and tested binocular vision under three illuminance light environments. The results show that the amount of change in visual acuity decreased as the illuminance value increased, the rate of decrease gradually slowed down and eventually tended to be flat. We found that with 200 lx as the dividing line, increasing the illuminance value at low illuminance can significantly improve visual acuity.

In order to deal with health threatening emergencies and the risk of infections during flight, a concept design for a multifunctional and medical separation area (MMSA) in an aircraft cabin has been developed and will be presented in this paper. The foundation for the conceptual design process is the identification of central user groups, their ergonomic properties and their medical needs. With regards to a high level of usability and safety, architectural dimensions and positions of the concept within existing types of aircraft cabins have been investigated and defined.One challenge within the design process was to highlight and adapt worldwide-valid infection prevention regulations on a new type of aircraft cabin areas. The second challenge was the development of additional flexible and multifunctional use cases in order to offer an added value for. As a result, one concept with three use cases will be presented and analyzed with regards to the vital requirements.

Crew alerting is a primary channel that provides awareness for the flight crew. It forms a complete and consistent human-computer interaction interface with the related information display and operation, to ensure the accuracy and efficiency of crew operation. It is the key link for the flight crew to intervene in the aircraft system and constitutes the last line of defense for the civil aircraft. Considering the essential role of flight crew alerting system in the pilot-system loops, design of flight crew alerting system is an important activity in civil aircraft systems engineering, with major impact to the operation safety of the airplane. However, due to the large number of aircraft airborne systems and the highly complex cross-linking relationship between the system, it is challenging to design correct and complete the crew warning system, and the related safety issues are also very prominent. In this paper, a systematic approach was proposed in the design of flight alert information, closely combined with system safety design and human-machine interaction design, to guarantee the correctness and completeness of aircraft flight alert information. The approach proposed in the paper, combined with the aircraft system safety design method, will improve the accuracy and integrity of the crew alerting design.

This paper investigates the relevance of past accidents to current airline operations. Focusing on four accidents cited by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the study used a mixed methods approach with a sequential explanatory design. In the first phase, an online survey gathered data about airline pilots’ awareness of, and attitudes towards the accidents. In the second phase, semi-structured interviews were held with a key informant (KI). The survey respondents overwhelmingly believe studying past accidents is important for improving safety. Surprisingly, TV documentaries were found to be the most common source of information about accidents. The interviews provided insight into the process by which the KI integrates knowledge of accidents into his professional practice as an airline captain. An adaptation of the ‘Swiss cheese model’ is proposed to explain how an experienced pilot incorporates salient features of past accidents into everyday flight operations.

The cockpit human factor assessment based on system level of a certain civil aircraft cockpit human factor assessment task was presented in this paper. Firstly, the airworthiness requirements related to human factors in the cockpit of civil aircraft was interpreted, the evaluation criteria of human factor design and assessment was sorted out and formed. Secondly, the evaluation process was developed to guide the assessment process. And then a energy system of a civil aircraft was chosen as an example, the process of determining the evaluation contents, carrying out the evaluation and forming the evaluation opinions were illustrated. After the assessment, the evaluation opinions were fed back to the corresponding system specialty. The closed loop feedback was formed to constitute the optimized design of cockpit iteration. This practice is a successful application of human factor design evaluation in civil aircraft cockpit.

Human factor influence on the flight safety is proven to be permanent and negative. This makes proactive studies of air traffic controllers’ (ATCO) attitude toward hazardous conditions or actions important and urgent. Such attitude is defined with indicators of human factor influence decision-making which includes ATCO preference system. Those in their turn explain both individual perception of potential hazards and generalized ranks generated by a group of ATCOs.Preference system uses an arranged set of typical ATCOs mistakes. It shows how one mistake prevails over another. Quantitatively it is designated with mistakes ranks and provides no answer on the value of such prevailing. In order to resolve this problem differentiating method was applied with outlets removal. Further non-parametric optimization of received sound groups was performed with help of Kemeny median and priority arrangement method.

Monitoring pilot’s fatigue status timely is very important for ensuring flight safety. It has been proved that physiological indexes can effectively reflect the fatigue state, but it is not convenient for pilots to measure the fatigue state in real time due to the obstacles of wearing and testing methods. The improved PVT (Psychomotor Vigilance Task) software based on mobile phone was developed out and applied to measure the vigilance level in a simulated flight task. The PVT and physiological index data were collected and analyzed. The experiment results showed that parameters of psychomotor vigilance task were correlated with LF/HF, A++ and B−−. The findings in this study could be used to develop applicable fatigue monitoring tool for pilots and airlines, and provide data support for reasonable arrangement of personnel work and prevention of fatigue risk.

The lighting system is one of the key subsystems in the spacecraft. A good lighting environment is needed not only for operations, but also for the astronauts’ leisure. In particular, it can reduce visual fatigue, improve work efficiency and safety, and be calibrated to optimise energy consumption.This study used the Minnesota Clerical Test to analyse the work efficiency and fatigue of 18 mixed-gender test participants from China inside a simulated cabin of the International Space Station (ISS) under lighting in three different colour temperatures. The results show that under local lighting conditions with a colour temperature of 4500 K, fatigue was the lowest, the participants’ satisfaction was higher, work efficiency was the highest, and the environment gave the participants a bright and relaxed feeling. A colour temperature of 2700 K was conducive to short-term office scenes, but during long-term work, it made people feel tired. Finally, a colour temperature of 7500 K got the participants excited, but long working hours made them feel uncomfortable. Therefore, further study is needed to investigate the impact of different types of lighting on efficiency.