Here's an interesting article for your Friday reading! It's all about human beings and our notorious failure to estimate risk accurately.
Why are we interested in it? Because driving is a real risk - one we take every day - and somehow it's just never assessed as serious as it should be.
The Traffic and Road Safety Research Group (that our founder Dr Isler belongs to) did some research to measure how people reacted and evaluated risk, live - while driving. They could move a risk meter mounted to the steering wheel of a driving simulator, and indicate how safe they felt at any given moment.
Interestingly, intersections, poles and ditches near the roads were not labelled risks often, and sometimes weren't noticed at all! The research team concluded that these findings have some real implications for road areas with a low perceived risk, where drivers end up not taking enough care.
You can read the full article here.
