Distortion of drivers' speed and time estimates in dangerous situations

It has been suggested that the rate of passage of time becomes slower during a car crash. Any such distortion of subjective time may have importantimplications for people's behaviour in dangerous driving situations and their subsequent memory of the events they experience. Research on retrospective and prospective time estimation tasks is reviewed and a new task is introduced in which films of events are systematically altered in speed. Participants then have to judge what alteration has been made to the film speed. In the first experiment drivers were reliably found to judge films of dangerous driving situations as having been sped up, while films of safer driving events were judged as playing too slowly. There was some evidence that older, more experienced drivers might overestimate the speed of dangerous events more than younger novice drivers. In a second experiment, participants viewed films of themselves or other people performing easy or harder tasks in the laboratory. Easy tasks and films of the participants themselves were most likely to be judged as having been increased in speed. The overestimation of the speed of dangerous events appeared to be a real phenomenon and was not interpretable in terms of the difficulty of the task or a lack of control. This could explain why drivers remember dangerous events as if time had slowed down, but it does not resolve the question ofwhether any such distortion actually happens at a time a dangerous event is experienced, or happens because of a later distortion of memory. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E157496

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/1904763618
• Authors:
  • CHAPMAN, P
  • COX, G
  • KIRWAN, C
• Publication Date: 2005

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 164-74
• Monograph Title: Work-related road safety: age, length of service and changes in crash risk
• Serial:
  • BEHAVIOURAL RESEARCH IN ROAD SAFETY 2005 - FIFTEENTH SEMINAR
  • Publisher: Department for Transport, England

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Conferences; Crashes; Drivers; Driving; Motor skills; Perception; Photography; Psychology; Recently qualified drivers; Speed; Time; Video cameras
• ITRD Terms: 1643: Accident; 1757: Age; 6750: CCD camera; 8525: Conference; 6750: Digital camera; 1772: Driver; 2229: Perception; 6751: Photography; 2255: Psychology; 1782: Recently qualified driver; 2205: Skill (road user); 5408: Speed; 5414: Time; 6750: Video camera
• Subject Areas: Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01220263
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: TRL
• ISBN: 1-904763-61-8
• Files: ITRD
• Created Date: Oct 27 2010 10:05AM