Better understanding female and male driving offenders' behavior: Psychological resources and vulnerabilities matter!

Sensation seeking and crashes among young cyclists

While young cyclists remain overrepresented in cycling crash figures, effective actions to mitigate their risks remain understudied and underapplied, especially in regions with low cycling tradition and weak or fragmented governance, as is the case in most Hispanic countries. One key emerging issue is the potential influence of personality traits such as sensation seeking (SS) on young cyclists' behavior and safety outcomes. This study aimed to assess the relationships among SS, cycling behavior, and safety-related outcomes among a sample of young cyclists. Data were collected from 945 cyclists aged 18-25 from five Hispanic countries, who responded to an electronic survey on personality traits and cycling-related topics. Significant associations were found between sensation seeking and risk-related cycling behaviors, as well as gender differences in SS, risky cycling behavior, and self-reported cycling crash rates, with males exhibiting higher values in all categories. Path analyses suggest that SS predicts self-reported crashes through the full mediation of both deliberate (traffic violations) and unintentional (errors) risky road behaviors, with the former having a greater explanatory effect on young cyclists' self-reported crash figures. The findings of this study highlight the need to address under-researched issues such as sensation seeking (SS) and risk-taking behavior through evidence-based interventions aimed at improving the safety of young cyclists. This is particularly relevant in countries with similar demographic characteristics and further nascent cycling cultures.

Mapping urban mobility using vehicle telematics to understand driving behaviour

Telematics data, primarily collected from on-board vehicle devices (OBDs), has been utilised in this study to generate a thorough understanding of driving behaviour. The urban case study area is the large metropolitan region of the West Midlands, UK, but the approach is generalizable and translatable to other global urban regions. The new approach of GeoSpatial and Temporal Mapping of Urban Mobility (GeoSTMUM) is used to convert telematics data into driving metrics, including the relative time the vehicle fleet spends idling, cruising, accelerating, and decelerating. The telematics data is also used to parameterize driving volatility and aggressiveness, which are key factors within road safety, which is a global issue. Two approaches to defining aggressive driving are applied and assessed, they are vehicle jerk (the second derivative of vehicle speed), and the profile of speed versus acceleration/deceleration. The telematics-based approach has a very high spatial resolution (15-150 m) and temporal resolution (2 h), which can be used to develop more accurate driving cycles. The approach allows for the determination of road segments with the highest potential for aggressive driving and highlights where additional safety measures could beneficially be adopted. Results highlight the strong correlation between vehicle road occupancy and aggressive driving.