The effects of on-street parking and road environment visual complexity on travel speed and reaction time.

On-street parking is associated with elevated crash risk. It is not known how drivers' mental workload and behaviour in the presence of on-street parking contributes to, or fails to reduce, this increased crash risk. On-street parking tends to co-exist with visually complex streetscapes that may affect workload and crash risk in their own right.

Effectiveness of traffic light vs. boom barrier controls at road-rail level crossings: a simulator study.

Although collisions at level crossings are relatively uncommon occurrences, the potential severity of their consequences make them a top priority among safety authorities. Twenty-five fully-licensed drivers aged between 20 and 50 years participated in a driving simulator study that compared the efficacy, and drivers' subjective perception, of two active level crossing traffic control devices: flashing lights with boom barriers and standard traffic lights. Because of its common usage in most states in Australia, a stop sign-controlled level crossing served as the passive referent.

Driver behaviour at rail level crossings: responses to flashing lights, traffic signals and stop signs in simulated rural driving.

Australian road and railway authorities have made a concerted effort to reduce the number of rail level crossings, particularly the higher risk passive crossings that are protected by devices such as 'give way' or 'stop' signs. To improve this situation, passive level crossings are often upgraded with active controls such as flashing red lights. Traffic signals may provide good safety outcomes at level crossings but remain untested.

Effects of advertising billboards during simulated driving.

There is currently a great deal of interest in the problem of driver distraction. Most research focuses on distractions from inside the vehicle, but drivers can also be distracted by objects outside the vehicle. Major roads are increasingly becoming sites for advertising billboards, and there is little research on the potential effects of this advertising on driving performance.

Do synaesthetic colours act as unique features in visual search?

For individuals with grapheme-colour synaesthesia, letters, numbers and words elicit vivid and highly consistent colour experiences. A critical question in determining the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon is whether synaesthetic colours arise early in visual processing, prior to the allocation of focused attention, or at some later stage following explicit recognition of the inducing form. If the synaesthetic colour elicited by an achromatic target emerges early in visual processing, then the target should be relatively easy to find in an array of achromatic distractor items, provided the target and distractors elicit different synaesthetic colours.