Auditory Motion and Pedestrian-Motor Vehicle Collisions

描述：行人与机动车相撞占所有职业死亡人数的6%以上。减少这些事故的知觉干预主要集中在视力上。听觉方法受到的研究关注较少。然而，由于行人工作人员和车辆操作员对视觉注意力的要求都很高，听觉警告可能是减少与汽车互动的行人工作人员受伤的有效途径。最近关于听觉隐约感的研究表明，听众往往低估了接近的声源到达他们身边所需的时间。知觉偏差有效地表明震源比实际距离更近，从而使听者有比预期更多的时间来避免碰撞(安全效果边际)。然而，对这些发现有两个警告，这对于减少工人死亡和创伤伤害很重要。首先，许多关于听觉隐约可见的研究都是在源速度远远低于典型机动车的情况下完成的。其次，越来越多的证据表明，与汽车通常发出的宽带噪音相比，听觉隐约可见的感知安全边际更大。这项研究的目的是确定最大限度地使感知偏差最大化的特定声学条件，以使听到隐约可见的声源比实际情况更近，以及允许最早检测到隐约可见的听觉运动的特定条件。然后，这些信息可以利用听觉感知偏差，以具有成本效益的方式增强行人的安全。例如，如果发现音调声音会增加隐约可见的偏差，那么通过临时的路面处理让驶近的车辆产生微妙的音调，应该会增加工人的安全边际。将进行心理声学实验，检查听觉隐约感和自我中心听觉运动的初步检测。具体地说，将调查声源速度和频谱(音调与噪声)的特性，以便在工作场所检测和感知迫在眉睫的机动车辆时带来尽可能大的“安全裕度”。通过利用听觉中的知觉偏差，这项工作的结果将为减少创伤性职业伤害和死亡的主要原因提供具体的、具有成本效益的建议。

DESCRIPTION: Pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions account for over 6% of all occupational fatalities. Perceptual interventions to reduce these accidents have focused primarily on vision. Auditory methods have received less research attention. However, given the high demands on the visual attention of both pedestrian workers and vehicle operators, auditory warning might be a fruitful avenue for the reduction of traumatic injury to pedestrian workers who interact with motor vehicles. Recent research on the perception of auditory looming has shown that listeners tend to underestimate the amount of time it will take for an approaching sound source to reach them. The perceptual bias effectively signals that the source is closer than actual and thus, gives the listener more time than expected to avoid collision (the margin of safety effect). However, there are two caveats to these findings that are important with regard to the reduction of worker fatality and traumatic injury. First, much of the research on auditory looming has been done with source velocities that are far below those typical of motor vehicles. Second, there is emerging evidence to suggest that the perceptual margin of safety for auditory looming is greater for tones than for the broadband noise that is typically emitted by motor vehicles. The objectives of this research are to identify the specific acoustic conditions that maximize the perceptual bias to hear looming sound sources as closer than actual, and the specific conditions that allow the earliest detection of looming auditory motion. This information can then be used to enhance pedestrian safety in a cost effective manner by taking advantage of auditory perceptual biases. For example, if tonal sounds are found to increase the looming bias, then making approaching vehicles produce subtle tones with a temporary a pavement treatment should increase the margin of worker safety. Psychoacoustic experiments will be carried out that examine the perception of auditory looming and the initial detection of egocentric auditory motion. Specifically, the characteristics of source velocity and spectrum (tones vs. noise) will be investigated in order to bring to the workplace the largest possible "margin of safety" in detecting and perceiving looming motor vehicles. By capitalizing on perceptual biases in auditory perception, the results of this work will provide specific, cost effective recommendations for reducing a leading cause of traumatic occupational injury and death.