Warning Helmet Design and Evaluation of an Professors Innovative Hazard Warning Yu Hsiu Hung Helmet for Elder Scooter Riders Conference Research 2016-2018
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Hazard Warning Helmet The global population of people ages 65 and older is growing at a fast rate. As population aging becomes a trend of the 21st century, the safety and mobility of all older road users deserves more attention. In Taiwan, senior citizens accounted for 11 percent of the total population; the country is now moving from an aging society to an aged society [1]. The most common motor vehicles are scooters. Scooters are allowed on most roads (except highways and expressways). Almost one-half of the total population owns a scooter and 70% of the registered vehicles are scooters [1]. The dense population and limited living spaces make scooter riding a convenient way to travel in and around the cities. The costs of riding scooters (including tax, gas, and maintenance) are lower than those of driving cars, making scooters becoming popular vehicles among adults and the elderly.However, the risks for riding scooters are much higher than those of driving automobiles [2]. According to You et al. [1], accidents involving scooters contribute more than 80% of fatalities in traffic accidents in Taiwan, resulting in more than 2,000 deaths annually. In fact, literature indicates that elder people are more likely to be involved in crashes, and that they are more likely to suffer serious injuries in crashes [3]. The probabilities and consequences of travel accidents occur on elderly people would be more than those occur on young people [2].
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Challenges of Older Scooter Riders
1. Easily distracted by surroundings
Horberry et al. [5] found that, compared with young adults, elder adults are more easily distracted by surroundings. Braitman et al. [6] and Fofanova and Vollrath [7] also found that elder drivers are less able to deal with complicated road conditions than young drivers.
2. Decreased visual attention
The main causes of higher risks of road traffic accidents among senior road users are the decreased visual attention and physical and functional capabilities [4].
3. Easily failing to give right of way As to the riding behavior, senior road users are more easily failing to give right of way (due to attention degeneration), leading to traffic collisions [8].
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How Older Scooter Riders React? Studies indicate that, in order to drive safe, senior road users (being aware of their limitations) are able to compensate for their physical degeneration by driving slower, driving less at night or less during bad weather, or keeping a safe distance behind the vehicle in front [9][10].
Driving slower
Driving less at night or during bad weather
Keeping a safe distance from other vehicle
However However, these strategies may not always be able to avoid risks and hazards on the road. Traffic accidents happen constantly.
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What actually happened? After followed and observed 5 elder scooter rider randomly on the road. We found that they have some riding patterns.
1. Autimobiles double park
In Taiwan, scooters are allowed to travel on the right/slow lanes, but not on the left/fast lanes. It is common that automobiles double park temporarily on the roadside with car signal lights flashing (for quick paying bills/buying groceries).
2. Forcing scooter riders to change the lane
However, it occupies a certain portion of the road/street, oftentimes (despite dangerous) forcing scooter riders to change the lane and pass through temporarily double parking automobiles.
3. Accidents happened during the lane changing
The problem is that traffic accidents/collision could have happened during the lane changing if the speed of the approaching vehicles behind is relatively high. In fact, the problem may get worse if the involved scooter riders are the elderly. The speed of the elder scooter riders typically is relatively slow. Elder scooter riders more vulnerable to be hit by any vehicles when changing the lane.
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Development of the Hazard Warning Helmet
The hazard warning helmet design was inspired by the fact that elder scooter riders might be hit by approaching vehicles from the back after being forced to change the lane (for passing through double parking automobiles on the roadside).
1. Obstacle detected
3. Apporching car detected
2. Backward detection on
4. Warning
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An observational study Participants
Convenience sampling and snowball sampling were used by visiting the community centers in the Tainan city, Taiwan.
Procedure
A total of five volunteered male elder participants (over 65 years old) were recruited.
All participants ride scooters on a daily basis and have more than 5 year experiences of riding scooters.
In the study, no monetary rewards were provided to participants.
At the beginning of the study, participants were given the instructions and explanations of the features of our developed helmet. This study adopted a with-in subject design. Participants were required to experience both of the two helmets (the conventional helmet and the hazard warning helmet).They were asked to wear every respective helmet and ride their scooters in their pace passing through 50 obstacles (i.e., double parked vehicles) along the roadside. The obstacles in this study were defined as temporarily double parked automobiles or traffic cones on the roadside, or any slow moving vehicles (including cars, scooters, and bicycles). Because these types of obstacles were common in Taiwan, this study did not manipulate their locations and appearances on the road.
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Results and Discussion Results of the study identified four types of behavioral reactions to roadside doubleparked vehicles: (1) reduced speed to pass through, (2) reduced speed, looked back and passed through, (3) looked in the side-mirror and passed through, and (4) passed through directly. As shown in Table 1, generally, it appears that when seeing obstacles or temporarily double parked vehicles, participants passed them through directly no matter which helmet they wore – averagely accounting for 66% of all behavioral reactions when wearing our proposed helmet and 91% of all behavioral reactions when wearing a conventional helmet. Few of the participants (no matter which helmet they wore) would look back or look in the side mirror to prevent approaching vehicles hitting them. The results revealed that three out of four behavioral reactions were related with keeping safe for avoiding possible collisions with fast approaching vehicles. However, the possibility of them happening was the lowest (no matter which helmet was worn). This suggests that safety awareness was poor among elder scooter riders and road safety education is necessary for elder scooter riders. Also, warning design and/or safety measures should be in place that help elder scooter riders prevent/avoid risks and hazards on the road.
Figure 1 compares the two helmet design on participants’ behavioral reactions when interacting with obstacles/double parked vehicles. From Figure 2, participants wearing our developed helmet, compared with those wearing a conventional helmet, are more likely to reduce speed of their scooters for passing through obstacles. On the other hand, participants wearing our developed helmet are less likely to pass directly through obstacles/ double parked vehicles than those wearing a conventional helmet. The results provided empirical evidence on the effectiveness of our developed hazard warning helmet in (1) promoting safe riding behavior, (2) inhibiting unsafe riding behavior, and (3) avoiding fast approaching vehicles. It is expected that elder scooter riders wearing our proposed helmet will ride safely on the roads.
Table 1. Participants’ behavioral reactions to and the corresponding # of obstacles (mostly double parked vehicles)
Figure 1. Comparisons of two helmet design on participants’ behavioral reactions when passing through double parked vehicles
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3D modeling by Solidworks and rendering by Keyshot
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Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a hazard warning helmet that helped the elderly avoid traffic collisions and accidents. Our developed helmet was consisted of four hardware components (the LED lights, the Arduino UNO microcontroller board, and two ultrasonic sensors). The innovative helmet provided visual warnings of fast approaching vehicles when elder riders pass through double-parked vehicles. An observational study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed helmet design. Five elderly participants participated in the study. They were asked to wear our developed helmet and a conventional helmet and respectively interacted with 50 roadside obstacles (mostly double parked vehicles). Results of the study showed that participants wearing our developed helmet were (1) more likely to reduce speed and (2) less likely to directly pass through double parked vehicles. Our work demonstrated that our innovative hazard warning helmet is effective in (1) promoting safe riding behavior, (2) inhibiting unsafe riding behavior, and (3) avoiding fast approaching vehicles from the back. Our study found elder scooter riders had risk taking riding behavior. Road safety education is needed (for example, through posters and social media and community networks, etc.) to enhance safety awareness among elder scooter riders. In addition, from the perspective of product design, designers should also put more emphasis on designing products not only improve the overall wellbeing, but also the health and safety of the elderly. Our society is stepping into a digital and aging society. Leveraging the power of technology to develop senior friendly products and devices becomes an important issue for all designers. This study is limited by the number of participants, culture, traffic conditions, environment, and ambient situations (e.g., noises and lighting), etc. More in-depth investigations are required to verify the efficacy of the proposed helmet design in avoiding traffic collisions and hazards. Results of this study provide insight on designing warning signals for scooter riders.
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