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How People Perceive ‘Driving Gone Green’
More than 405,000 fully electric vehicles (EVs) are on the road worldwide this year, according to a recent report from a German renewable energy company. That may not seem like many – after all, there are over 1 billion cars in the world. But that number is fully double the number of EVs that were on the road just 2 years ago. Despite what seems to be a burgeoning market for plug-and-play vehicles, misinformation and stereotypes about the cars have proved a major impediment for manufacturers. Researchers from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom recently investigated public perceptions of electric cars by surveying 55 EV drivers.
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Coaching Senior Drivers
With older people facing as high a risk of car crashes as teens, some states and provinces now test older drivers with the aim of getting the riskiest motorists off the road. But the tests they use are inadequate, says cognitive psychologist Normand Teasdale of Université Laval in Québec. Some governments only test vision; others test cognition, too. In some cases, on-the-road tests also are required. But none of these tests is enough—they lack accuracy, sensitivity and specificity.
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Navigating the Brain’s GPS
More than a decade ago, researchers discovered that London taxi drivers, who have to navigate one of the most byzantine street grids in the world, have atypical brain characteristics. Specifically, the posterior hippocampi—a brain region associated with spatial memory—are larger compared to other people, scientists found. A new study offers some explanation for this phenomenon. The findings pinpoint the precise brain regions used in navigation, and in doing so change how scientists believed we use our brain to find our way around. Previously, researchers had disagreed over whether the brain calculates a route or calculates the straight-line to a destination.
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Adults with Autism Report Struggles With Driving
As the population of adults diagnosed with autism grows, a new study provides a first step toward identifying whether this population is getting help with a key element of independent living — appropriate driving education. Only a few studies have investigated driving ability in individuals with autism, and those studies concentrated on adolescents and new drivers rather than experienced adult drivers. Those studies relied on either parental reports or evaluations based on one aspect of driving behavior. But in the new research, a team led by University of Drexel psychological scientist Brian P.
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Daydreaming: The Other Kind of Distracted Driving
For many, the term “distracted driving” conjures up a familiar image: a motorist talking or texting on a cell phone instead of paying attention to the surrounding traffic and road conditions. The dangers of phoning or texting while driving are so evident that 13 American states have passed laws banning use of handheld devices while driving. But can distracted driving also be caused by internal factors? Psychological scientists Matthew R. Yanko and Thomas M. Spalek of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia wanted to gauge whether simple “mind-wandering,” thinking about anything but the task at hand, would distract drivers the same way portable gadgets do.
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Why We Pass Some Cars, Follow Others
Cars are the ultimate status symbol. They also generate some remarkable forms of discrimination. A Maserati gets more respect than a Volkswagen Bug. Classic psychological studies have demonstrated that a drivers extend more patience and courtesy to motorists driving expensive cars than those in older, cheaper vehicles. In their seminal 1968 experiment, for example, Anthony N. Doob and Alan E. Gross found that drivers waited longer to honk at a high-priced car than when blocked by an old model. This builds on a wide body of research showing that people act more aggressively toward others of low social status.
