Agenda - Council - 11/13/2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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distraction issues. Electronic billboards were identified as one of six noted sources of distraction. Parliament of Victoria, Australia, Report of the Road Safety Committee on the Inquiry into Driver Distraction (2006)14 This report identified road signs and advertising as one of the largest sources of driver distraction. At least three billboards near Melbourne, Australia display moving images. "The Committee considers these screens to be at the high end of potential visual distraction and accordingly, present a risk to drivers." The study also included a quote from the Manager of the Road User Behaviour group at VicRoads (the State's road and traffic authority) from a December 2005 hearing: What we do know is when there is movement involved, such as flicker or movement in the visual periphery, that this is more likely to capture a driver's attention. We actually are hard -wired as human beings to movement, so particularly moving screens and information that scrolls at intersections and in highly complex driving situations these are risky, and in particular researchers have been most concerned about those sort of advertising materials. This opinion would suggest that electronic signs can present a distraction to drivers. 3.4 How Much Distraction Is a Problem? A number of studies were identified that discussed concerns with driver distraction generally. It should be noted that some of the studies cited use specific crash data that is ten or more years old. Direct comparison of distraction sources to influences of today may not be completely valid due to increased technological sophistication of distracting influences. These could include in - vehicle technology (e.g., navigation systems, MP3 players, DVD players, CD players, computer systems, etc.) as well as other potentially distracting influences (e.g., cell phones, text messaging, dynamic signage, other roadway elements, etc.) that were not commonplace when the data for these studies was collected: Australian Road Research Board Investigations of Distraction by Irrelevant Information (Johnston & Cole, 1976)15 This research used five experiments to test whether drivers could maintain efficient performance in their driving tasks while being subjected to content that was information rich, but irrelevant to driving. The findings were that a small, but statistically significant amount of performance degradation was observed when the participant was under a critical load of stimuli. 10