ABSTRACT
A well-worn axiom in the road safety arena is that, despite the apparent ease with which drivers seem to cope with the driving task, it is they who are the principal cause of crashes. Outwardly, then, technology is no longer the problem. Fewer than five per cent of crashes are due directly to mechanical failure, a remarkable feat when you consider the numbers of cars in use at any one time. Depending on the study quoted, however, driver error contributes anything between 75 and 95 per cent to accident causation (reference). That being the case, we ask what types of errors are drivers making and what are the causal factors? The work of three pioneers in human error research is used: Donald Norman, James Reason and Jens Rasmussen. An overview of the wider research on driver error allows us to consider in some detail the different types of errors drivers make and, moreover, to develop a generic driver error taxonomy based on the dominant psychological mechanisms thought to be involved. These mechanisms are: perception, attention, situation assessment, planning and intention, memory and recall, and action execution. We then go further to develop a taxonomy of road transport error causing factors, again derived from the considerable body of driver error literature. Having dealt with vehicle technology in Chapters 2 and 3, we can use this taxonomy to think again about where, and to what ends, such technology could be deployed. Like the HTAoD, it is offered as a resource for other researchers and designers.
