Pedestrian conspicuity at night: failure to observe a biological motion advantage in a high‐clutter environment

Moberly, Nicholas J.; Langham, Martin

doi:10.1002/acp.808

Cited by 31 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…An alternative laboratory‐based approach involves recording video clips from inside a real vehicle, as it is driven past pedestrians. These video clips can then be replayed to participants in a laboratory setting to measure how and when they respond . With both simulator and video‐based studies, important technical limitations are inherent in all video display systems.…”

Section: Experimental Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The conspicuity of pedestrians at night: a review

Tyrrell

Wood

Owens

et al. 2016

Clinical and Experimental Optometry

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Drivers' visual limitations are a leading contributor to night-time traffic crashes involving pedestrians. This paper reviews the basic changes in vision that occur at night for young and old visually healthy drivers, as well as those with common ocular pathology. To maximise their safety at night, pedestrians should be conspicuous. That is, beyond being simply visible (detectable as an ambiguous object), they should attract the attention of drivers and be readily perceivable as pedestrians. Research has established that the conspicuity of pedestrians can be optimised by attaching retroreflective markings to the pedestrian's extremities. Doing so highlights the pedestrian's 'biological motion,' which facilitates the accurate perception of a person; however, retroreflective markings on the torso (for example, vests) are less effective. Importantly, behavioural evidence indicates that most road users -drivers and pedestrians alikeare not aware of the limitations of night vision. For example, drivers typically 'overdrive' the useful range of their headlight beams and under-use their high beam headlight setting. Further, pedestrians overestimate their own conspicuity at night and fail to appreciate the extent to which their own conspicuity depends on their clothing. The widespread misunderstanding of the challenges associated with night driving reflects a lack of awareness of the fundamental limitations of night vision. Educational interventions are needed to ameliorate these dangerous misunderstandings and to improve the safety of all road users at night.

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Section: Experimental Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To our knowledge, only one study has failed to find an advantage of biomotion markings for pedestrian conspicuity at night . This laboratory‐based study required participants to respond to video clips that had been recorded in a visually cluttered traffic setting at night.…”

Section: Importance Of Clothing Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The conspicuity of pedestrians at night: a review

Tyrrell

Wood

Owens

et al. 2016

Clinical and Experimental Optometry

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“…Evidence also indicates that not all individuals are perceptually competent, and some features may be misinterpreted due to various forms of interference, including, visual clutter (Moberly & Langham, 2002), low light (Jackman, 2012), or visual occlusion (Steel & Dogramaci, 2015). The following section overviews some of the biological motion perception ability research.…”

Section: Perceptual Limitations Of Soldiers In Friendly Fire Incidentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That said, there is minimal consideration for application in other settings, such as the (para) military settings (Steel, Ellem, & Baxter, 2015), despite logical association. Individuals in these professions must make numerous decisions under pressure, sometimes based on often confusing and seemingly contradictory visual information (i.e., visual clutter; Moberly & Langham, 2002;Tyrrell, Wood, Chaparro, Carberry, Chu, & Marszalek, 2009;Van Boxtel & Lu, 2012)-events that can result in misidentification as well as decision-making and response errors. In the military context, the ability to recognize and identify familiar and nonfamiliars and their intentions from brief or limited biological movement information has potential in helping reduce close-combat friendly fire incidents.…”

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confidence: 99%

Can biological motion research provide insight on how to reduce friendly fire incidents?

Steel

Baxter

Dogramaci³

et al. 2016

Psychon Bull Rev

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The ability to accurately detect, perceive, and recognize biological motion can be associated with a fundamental drive for survival, and it is a significant interest for perception researchers. This field examines various perceptual features of motion and has been assessed and applied in several real-world contexts (e.g., biometric, sport). Unexplored applications still exist however, including the military issue of friendly fire. There are many causes and processes leading to friendly fire and specific challenges that are associated with visual information extraction during engagement, such as brief glimpses, low acuity, camouflage, and uniform deception. Furthermore, visual information must often be processed under highly stressful (potentially threatening), timeconstrained conditions that present a significant problem for soldiers. Biological motion research and anecdotal evidence from experienced combatants suggests that intentions, emotions, identities of human motion can be identified and discriminated, even when visual display is degraded or limited. Furthermore, research suggests that perceptual discriminatory capability of movement under visually constrained conditions is trainable. Therefore, given the limited military research linked to biological motion and friendly fire, an opportunity for cross-disciplinary investigations exists. The focus of this paper is twofold: first, to provide evidence for the possible link between biological motion factors and friendly fire, and second, to propose conceptual and methodological considerations and recommendations for perceptual-cognitive training within current military programs.

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“…Local density, however, refers to the amount of information surrounding a critical display area and can be quantitatively defined as the distance between the critical display area (e.g., the aircraft indicator in a HUD) and nearby distracters (Intriligator & Cavanagh, 2001). In addition to definitions that center primarily on density, clutter has also been attributed to the size of a visual target of interest within the display (Ewing et al, 2006), as well as the similarity of objects in physical appearance or luminance to that visual target (Moberly & Langham, 2002;Ververs & Wickens, 1998;Wang et al, 2001). Collectively, these approaches suggest that data-driven, or bottom-up factors are significant contributors of clutter.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bottom-up and Top-down Contributors to Pilot Perceptions of Display Clutter in Advanced Flight Deck Technologies

Alexander

Stelzer

Kim

et al. 2008

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

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Future concepts for the National Airspace System rely on technologies, such as synthetic and enhanced vision systems, to support flight efficiency associated with improved terrain and traffic awareness. While these technologies provide the pilot access to information not available with traditional flight instrumentation, the presentation of this additional information may serve to produce display clutter, thus inhibiting the processes and tasks they are designed to support. An experiment was conducted to assess pilot perceptions and identification of both bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (knowledge-driven) contributing factors to display clutter. Results revealed the importance of both visual and information density (bottom-up and top-down factors, respectively) to the perception of clutter. Although added display elements provided pilots with critical flight information, pilots considered displays to be cluttered when the imposed visual density exceeded the information density required for specific flight tasks. These findings suggest that moderate levels of display clutter may be tolerable, to the extent that the information is relevant to the tasks at hand.

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Pedestrian conspicuity at night: failure to observe a biological motion advantage in a high‐clutter environment

Cited by 31 publications

References 20 publications

The conspicuity of pedestrians at night: a review

The conspicuity of pedestrians at night: a review

Can biological motion research provide insight on how to reduce friendly fire incidents?

Bottom-up and Top-down Contributors to Pilot Perceptions of Display Clutter in Advanced Flight Deck Technologies

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