scholarly journals The Effects of Wearing Helmets on Reaction of Motorcycle Riders

Vehicles ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 840-850
Author(s):  
Dengchuan Cai ◽  
Yu-Hsuan Chen ◽  
Chih-Jen Lee

In Taiwan, motorcycles are the most commonly used means of transportation and also have the highest accident rate. Because motorcycles are less stable and provide less protection than cars, motorcycle riders are vulnerable in traffic accidents. Furthermore, head trauma is often fatal, causing a great loss to society. Although helmets provide protection to the head, they also affect the visual field of motorcycle riders. However, the literature mostly focuses on the protective effect of helmets after a collision and rarely considers the influence of helmets prior to collisions. In the study design, participants wore three different types of helmet and watched a pre-recorded video of an actual street with pre-placed warning triangles at a speed of 60 km/h. Participants were asked to press a button when they saw a warning triangle. The time between participants seeing the warning triangle and arriving at the warning triangle was calculated. This time is referred to as the “early reaction time.” The number of missed presses and false presses was also recorded. The results of the study show that: (1) Of the three types of helmet, wearing half helmets produced the longest early reaction times, followed by 3/4 helmets, with full face helmets with the shortest early reaction times. (2) Early reaction times when wearing a half helmet were the same as early reaction times when not wearing a helmet. (3) The results for the total number of missed and false presses when wearing the three types of helmet were the same as for the results of the early reaction time analysis. (4) Sex and age had no effect on early reaction times. The experimental results can be used as a reference for helmet design and academic research.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashwini Kumar

The Geometrical Stroop like task was administered to study the amount of interference in different handed persons in naming geometrical word and their shape when stimuli were presented in two different conditions congruent and incongruent in two visual fields (RVF and LVF). It was hypothesized that, the ability of visual perception can be differing of a person in terms of their handedness. 149 subjects were voluntary participated in this study in which 80 subjects were predominantly Right handed and rest of them were non-right handed, between 17 and 21 years old. Each pair of stimulus was presented for 180msec preceded by a fixation dot for 2000msec. Subjects were asked to respond as fast and as accurately as they could either the geometrical words or the shape or both, depending upon the conditions. Reaction times of correct responses were analyzed. As expected, the results of this study on the basis of Stroop-like experiment give us enough findings in support of hypothesis. The findings of current study indicate that congruency effect in both of the groups. A significantly higher accuracy rates were obtained in non right handed person under the Stroop interference condition. Under this same condition, reaction time analysis yielded also significant differences between two groups.


2013 ◽  
Vol 319 ◽  
pp. 326-330
Author(s):  
Ru Ting Xia ◽  
Jian Fan

The number of traffic accidents keeps increasing with the development of traffic environments. There are a lot of accidents at twilight time. The cause of these accidents is depending upon the shift of drivers’ visual attention. The characteristic of visual attention in three-dimensional (3D) space were studied using a driving simulation device in order to test the effects of environment illuminance on the visual attention in this paper. In the experiments, two kind of illuminance conditions were used, brightness condition and twilight condition. In each experiment, there were three kinds of cue condition: valid, invalid and neutral condition. Observer moved forward at 0.44m/s speed, and illuminance were 480~680lx and 95~135lx in the experimental device inner. The subject’s task was to judge whether the target presented nearer than fixation point or further than it. Reaction times of the subjects on the cue were measured. As the results, it was claritied that (1) the visual adaptive ability of the subjects had a individual difference, (2) the shift of attention was faster from far to near than from near to far, (3) the reaction time was effected by the attention moved distance, (4) brightness has had very great influence upon the delay of reaction time of the drivers, and the delay of reaction time depended on the quantity of attention moved.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (Special1) ◽  
pp. 108-115
Author(s):  
Nazlin HA ◽  
Siti Zawiah MD

The involvement of ageing drivers in traffic accidents were reported but little cited on the severity of auditory driving distractions. Driving distraction contributes to increases in reaction time which can lead to safety traffic risks. Thus, in this study, hand and foot reaction times were measured in response to different distractions within the identical simulated driving route. The task varies in a controlled setting where soundless distractions were present, Comfortable Loudness Level (CLL), Uncomfortable Loudness Level (ULL) auditory distractions, and phone call distraction. Participants were among 40 Malaysian driving license holders consists of 57.5% males and 42.5% females with age mean, (M=51.83, SD=14.058). Results indicated that both hand and foot reaction time were shortest for CLL and longest during phone call. Ageing male scored shortest hand reaction time of 1.15s during CLL distraction. For foot reaction time, ageing male scores shortest of 0.92s for both CLL and no distractions. Pearson’s coefficient of correlation shows r>0.5. The results indicated hand reaction time was affected by foot reaction time (r=0.665), was significantly more for foot when compared with hand, could be because of difference in nerve conduction velocity and movement time of the hand when compared with that of foot.


2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 114-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Predrag Djuric ◽  
Danka Filipovic

Introduction. Human factor is the single cause of road traffic injuries in 57%, and together with other factors in more than 90% of all road traffic accidents. Human factor includes many aspects, where reaction time is very important. Material and methods. Thirty healthy drivers 28-40 y.o. with 50-500 km passed per week, having caused at least one road traffic accident in the last ten years were selected, provided they were not under the influence of alcohol and drugs during traffic accident. The same number of control were selected. Both cases and controls were tested to reaction time. Results. We found statistically significant difference between car drivers who caused car accidents and those who did not in both simple and choice reaction times. Discussion. Car drivers who caused road traffic accidents have longer reaction time (both simple and choice reaction time), but as the tasks were more complex, that difference was less visible. Since drivers involved in this study had introductory phase before measuring their reaction times, they faced with unpleasant sound when they made mistake, which forced them to be aware not to make a mistake in further tasks, so they showed longer reaction times. Conclusion. Measuring of reaction time seems to be important, and as we have showed they are different in drivers who have caused road traffic accidents and those who have do not.


2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (7) ◽  
pp. 1024-1044 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Fotios ◽  
C Cheal ◽  
S Fox ◽  
J Uttley

The presence of fog leads to an increase in road traffic accidents. An experiment was carried out using a scale model to investigate how the detection of hazards in peripheral vision was affected by changes in luminance (0.1 cd/m2 and 1.0 cd/m2 road surface luminance), scotopic/photopic (S/P) ratio (0.65 and 1.40) and fog density (none, thin and thick). Two hazards were used, a road surface obstacle and lane change of another vehicle. Increasing luminance, and reducing from thick to thin fog, led to significant increase in detection rate and a reduction in reaction time, for both types of hazard. The effect of a change in S/P ratio was significant only when measuring detection of the surface obstacle using reaction times, under the thick fog, with an increase in S/P ratio leading to a shorter reaction time.


GeroPsych ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Rast ◽  
Daniel Zimprich

In order to model within-person (WP) variance in a reaction time task, we applied a mixed location scale model using 335 participants from the second wave of the Zurich Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Aging. The age of the respondents and the performance in another reaction time task were used to explain individual differences in the WP variance. To account for larger variances due to slower reaction times, we also used the average of the predicted individual reaction time (RT) as a predictor for the WP variability. Here, the WP variability was a function of the mean. At the same time, older participants were more variable and those with better performance in another RT task were more consistent in their responses.


2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Mayr ◽  
Michael Niedeggen ◽  
Axel Buchner ◽  
Guido Orgs

Responding to a stimulus that had to be ignored previously is usually slowed-down (negative priming effect). This study investigates the reaction time and ERP effects of the negative priming phenomenon in the auditory domain. Thirty participants had to categorize sounds as musical instruments or animal voices. Reaction times were slowed-down in the negative priming condition relative to two control conditions. This effect was stronger for slow reactions (above intraindividual median) than for fast reactions (below intraindividual median). ERP analysis revealed a parietally located negativity of the negative priming condition compared to the control conditions between 550-730 ms poststimulus. This replicates the findings of Mayr, Niedeggen, Buchner, and Pietrowsky (2003) . The ERP correlate was more pronounced for slow trials (above intraindividual median) than for fast trials (below intraindividual median). The dependency of the negative priming effect size on the reaction time level found in the reaction time analysis as well as in the ERP analysis is consistent with both the inhibition as well as the episodic retrieval account of negative priming. A methodological artifact explanation of this effect-size dependency is discussed and discarded.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sybille Rockstroh ◽  
Karl Schweizer

Effects of four retest-practice sessions separated by 2 h intervals on the relationship between general intelligence and four reaction time tasks (two memory tests: Sternberg's memory scanning, Posner's letter comparison; and two attention tests: continuous attention, attention switching) were examined in a sample of 83 male participants. Reaction times on all tasks were shortened significantly. The effects were most pronounced with respect to the Posner paradigm and smallest with respect to the Sternberg paradigm. The relationship to general intelligence changed after practice for two reaction time tasks. It increased to significance for continuous attention and decreased for the Posner paradigm. These results indicate that the relationship between psychometric intelligence and elementary cognitive tasks depends on the ability of skill acquisition. In the search for the cognitive roots of intelligence the concept of learning seems to be of importance.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Hagemeister

Abstract. When concentration tests are completed repeatedly, reaction time and error rate decrease considerably, but the underlying ability does not improve. In order to overcome this validity problem this study aimed to test if the practice effect between tests and within tests can be useful in determining whether persons have already completed this test. The power law of practice postulates that practice effects are greater in unpracticed than in practiced persons. Two experiments were carried out in which the participants completed the same tests at the beginning and at the end of two test sessions set about 3 days apart. In both experiments, the logistic regression could indeed classify persons according to previous practice through the practice effect between the tests at the beginning and at the end of the session, and, less well but still significantly, through the practice effect within the first test of the session. Further analyses showed that the practice effects correlated more highly with the initial performance than was to be expected for mathematical reasons; typically persons with long reaction times have larger practice effects. Thus, small practice effects alone do not allow one to conclude that a person has worked on the test before.


2000 ◽  
Vol 628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuki Nakanishi ◽  
Souichi Kumon ◽  
Kazuyuki Hirao ◽  
Hiroshi Jinnai

ABSTRACTMacroporous silicate thick films were prepared by a sol-gel dip-coating method accompanied by the phase separation using methyl-trimethoxysilane (MTMS), nitric acid and dimethylformamide (DMF) as starting components. The morphology of the film varied to a large extent depending on the time elapsed after the hydrolysis until the dipping of the coating solution. On a glass substrate, the films prepared by early dipping had inhomogeneous submicrometer-sized pores on the surface of the film. At increased reaction times, relatively narrow sized isolated macropores were observed and their size gradually decreased with the increase of reaction time. On a polyester substrate, in contrast, micrometer-sized isolated spherical gel domains were homogeneously deposited by earlier dippings. With an increase of reaction time, the volume fraction of the gel phase increased, then the morphology of the coating transformed into co-continuous gel domains and macropores, and finally inverted into the continuous gel domains with isolated macropores. The overall morphological variation with the reaction time was explained in terms of the phase separation and the structure freezing by the forced gelation, both of which were induced by the evaporation of methanol during the dipping operation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document