Traffic psychology

Additionally, social and cognitive applications of psychology are used, such as enforcement, road safety education campaigns, and also therapeutic and rehabilitation programs.

Studies of factors such as attention, memory, spatial cognition, inexperience, stress, inebriation, distracting/ambiguous stimuli, fatigue, and secondary tasks such as phone conversations are used to understand and investigate the experience and actions of road users.

By examining the emotions that influence cognitive processes, traffic psychology helps us understand the resulting actions and offers strategies to modify behavior.

[6] As a tool, traffic psychology employs subjective analysis to improve overall quality of life by observing, identifying, and modifying behavior.

Its primary objective is to understand, predict, and implement measures to change road use behavior, ultimately aiming to reduce the negative impacts of traffic participation.

This process attempts to develop valid and reliable methods to better understand and predict the effects of human variability with its environmental interactions on safety.

This is just one type of road factor for crashes that Sullman goes on to explain in further detail: Variability of the driver's age, personality, temperament, stress and expertise affect speed, control and decisions.

Some factors include: Linking brain regions, networks, and circuits with behaviors involved in operating a vehicle is one of the more salient topics of research within traffic psychology.

Transportation psychology has emerged rapidly since the 1980s and, from its inception, has followed an interdisciplinary approach and has shared common topics with other fields, in particular medicine (e.g. driving aptitude), engineering (e.g. ergonomics and human factors), and economics (e.g. travel demand management).