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Post by the light works on Dec 30, 2013 0:35:24 GMT
I would guess we are all familiar with the expression "Speed Kills" and we all agree that more speed means more kinetic energy, and less margin for error. However, I also think that setting speeds too slow can also create a hazard in that people tend to become inattentive at low speeds I feel that if my speed is below a certain pace, I tend to pay less attention to my immediate surroundings, and also, in areas where speeds are controlled to be slow, I tend to have to remind myself to watch for traffic.
Granted, there are conditions that affect this. narrow bridges and suchlike tend to make people more attentive at lower speeds; but I think this might be an overall condition worth testing.
I'd like to see a simulated parking lot set up; with the usual sorts of hazards, and first tell a driver to drive through the course at their comfortable pace. then set a required maximum speed of 25% to 50% less, and see if they are less attentive at the slower speed.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 8:25:52 GMT
I think that if you know you're in a test, you're going to be attentive--especially on a track. I can't see a way to get around this.
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Post by the light works on Dec 30, 2013 14:31:35 GMT
I think that if you know you're in a test, you're going to be attentive--especially on a track. I can't see a way to get around this. I suspect it won't make a difference.
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 30, 2013 17:07:01 GMT
How well you know the 'course' would probably be a major factor. If you are driving along a road you don't know you will tend to pay more attention than if you are driving a route you've gone down several times before.
A way to avoid people knowing what is going on would be to tell them that you are testing something else - say a revisit of the 'Men are better drivers' myth. You'd want a very long course, with speed restrictions at certain points, and allow the drivers to go around the course a few times to get used to it.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 30, 2013 17:22:50 GMT
This might be akin to the old belief that you usually have a crash within a mile of home, supposedly because you're on autopilot and inattentive during the final minute or two while driving over a familiar route, regardless of speed.
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Post by ironhold on Dec 30, 2013 18:17:19 GMT
How well you know the 'course' would probably be a major factor. If you are driving along a road you don't know you will tend to pay more attention than if you are driving a route you've gone down several times before. A way to avoid people knowing what is going on would be to tell them that you are testing something else - say a revisit of the 'Men are better drivers' myth. You'd want a very long course, with speed restrictions at certain points, and allow the drivers to go around the course a few times to get used to it. Another idea might be to have them "re-test" the myth of whether men are more or less likely to ask for directions. In this case, the people inside the vehicles will be looking for a specific set of streets and then finally an address. The twist, however, is that along the way a number of oddities will happen. On one street, we could have Buster's legs sticking out from beneath a parked car, as if Buster was attempting to service the vehicle. On another street, a rubber ball could roll out into the road. A third street could have a caution sign partially blocking the road (such as "Caution: Uneven Pavement"). Et cetra. If the driver hits any of these items, the test is immediately halted and the driver is immediately debriefed. But if they arrive at the destination, the team members doing the test will ask the driver how many of these items they saw.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 30, 2013 19:18:55 GMT
How well you know the 'course' would probably be a major factor. If you are driving along a road you don't know you will tend to pay more attention than if you are driving a route you've gone down several times before. A way to avoid people knowing what is going on would be to tell them that you are testing something else - say a revisit of the 'Men are better drivers' myth. You'd want a very long course, with speed restrictions at certain points, and allow the drivers to go around the course a few times to get used to it. Another idea might be to have them "re-test" the myth of whether men are more or less likely to ask for directions. In this case, the people inside the vehicles will be looking for a specific set of streets and then finally an address. The twist, however, is that along the way a number of oddities will happen. On one street, we could have Buster's legs sticking out from beneath a parked car, as if Buster was attempting to service the vehicle. On another street, a rubber ball could roll out into the road. A third street could have a caution sign partially blocking the road (such as "Caution: Uneven Pavement"). Et cetra. If the driver hits any of these items, the test is immediately halted and the driver is immediately debriefed. But if they arrive at the destination, the team members doing the test will ask the driver how many of these items they saw. I was thinking something along the same lines, but I think there needs to be at least some familiarity with the area and also the task shouldn't be something that requires an excess of attention, since there's a risk that the test subjects will then either be so attentive to the specific thing they're looking for that they won't notice much else, or they're so attentive in general that they'll pick up on pretty much anything you can throw at them. Both scenarios lead to a skewed result. How about this: You call in volounteers who have been driving in the section of San Fransisco they choose as their test area for at least 5 years (familiarity with the area). You then choose a starting point and an end point a reasonable distance from each other that will allow the perticipants to choose different routes to get to the end point. There will have to be a bottleneck both somewhere near the start and the end of the test - a road that you have to take to get away from the starting point and another you have to take to get to the end point. Those roads will then be the actual testing grounds. At the starting point you place some weird things along the bottleneck road, like the ones Ironhold suggested, but the speed limit is what it usually is. The bottleneck close to the end point will be where you seek permission with the city (or the owner if it's private property) to temporarily lower the speed limit and then throw little surprises at them again and see what happens. Is there a difference? To not give the test away, you tell the participants that they're testing a myth that men and women choose their driving routes differently from each other, but you can't go into specifics because it will ruin the test. All the participants need to do is get from point A to point B within a specified time frame and without breaking any laws. It's not a race, so there are no points for getting there fast. They should take the route that they think is best, whatever "best" means to them. Most participants will probably take a guess that the test has something to do with whether or not you plan ahead for traffic heavy areas, number of traffic lights along the way, the most direct route or something like that. Let them guess all they want. The real test is if they're more or less attentive to their surroundings when the speed limit drops near the end.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 1:33:21 GMT
Where I usually notice it is in parking lots and private residential developments, rather than public streets.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 31, 2013 9:29:56 GMT
Where I usually notice it is in parking lots and private residential developments, rather than public streets. Then use those two types of areas as the bottlenecks
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 14:44:22 GMT
Where I usually notice it is in parking lots and private residential developments, rather than public streets. Then use those two types of areas as the bottlenecks I think it would be better to set up a fake parking lot - and say you are doing a survey of parking habits.
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Post by Lokifan on Dec 31, 2013 15:15:15 GMT
Maybe set something up in a closed parking lot with other volunteers crowding the lanes with cars and pedestrians?
Set it up as "having to park at one specific spot". Getting to the spot will be the real test.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 15:29:54 GMT
Maybe set something up in a closed parking lot with other volunteers crowding the lanes with cars and pedestrians? Set it up as "having to park at one specific spot". Getting to the spot will be the real test. have a simulated shopping center and give them lists of stores to visit. tell them you are judging how they select a parking spot. and that you are trying to create a realistic parking experience. then send them all in at once. (or 3 or 4 at a time)
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 31, 2013 16:28:26 GMT
Again, the problem with this approach is that it is being tested in an environment the subjects don't know, so they will be more alert than in a setting they know well. Added to this is that the nature of the proposed test requires a higher degree of observation and alertness.
In order to test this it would have to be in a situation where the driver has no reason to be anything other than relaxed nor 'needing' to be paying attention to what is going on around them. Hence the need to find a way to make the route something the drivers are familiar with to some degree.
Following people from their homes is not practical in a MB context, as it would be a logistical nightmare to arrange everything and too expensive to try and fit cameras to peoples cars to follow them. They only seem to have one or two camera rigs suitable for instillation on vehicles, and these are not the sort of thing they would want to leave in place overnight because chances are someone would steal them - and damage the car in the process.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 16:40:18 GMT
Again, the problem with this approach is that it is being tested in an environment the subjects don't know, so they will be more alert than in a setting they know well. Added to this is that the nature of the proposed test requires a higher degree of observation and alertness. In order to test this it would have to be in a situation where the driver has no reason to be anything other than relaxed nor 'needing' to be paying attention to what is going on around them. Hence the need to find a way to make the route something the drivers are familiar with to some degree. Following people from their homes is not practical in a MB context, as it would be a logistical nightmare to arrange everything and too expensive to try and fit cameras to peoples cars to follow them. They only seem to have one or two camera rigs suitable for instillation on vehicles, and these are not the sort of thing they would want to leave in place overnight because chances are someone would steal them - and damage the car in the process. I think a shopping center parking lot is a familiar enough environment that even one they have not been to before would be a comfortable enough environment to allow them to become complacent. (by complacent, I mean devoting more attention to choosing a parking space than to what is in their path)
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 31, 2013 18:54:52 GMT
Using a shopping centre has a whole host of potential production/filming problems. If the parking lot is being used then filming would be disruptive to the normal running of the centre, and all those people would most likely also disrupt filming. Closing the lot down would probably not go down well with the centre, and certainly not with those stores closest to that part of the lot, as they would argue that this will cause a drop in trade - meaning they would end up asking for far more money than MB has to close the lot down for them.
Using a vacant lot runs into other problems, principally transportation of items (or cars) to fill it enough for testing. Even if they are using cars from a scrap yard, and the owner allows them to take vehicles for no cost, they still have to get those cars to the lot - which again would cost far more money than MB have as well as being a logistical nightmare to set up.
There is a reason that they have filmed driving myths that require a course at the Police driver training centre - they can use equipment that is already there.
As I think I've noted before, I try to look at things from the production viewpoint when browsing through ideas. This means that I look at ideas, or more specifically testing procedures, in terms of what would be cheapest and easiest to do. Minimal equipment, building, time needed, permissions, crew numbers and logistics. If you can boil things down to the fastest and cheapest tests then the show has the option to increase the complexity/costs involved to make things bigger and better - Or just to go off on a slight tangent and test something else. Besides, keeping things as simple as possible means there is less to go wrong and when something does go wrong you have a good chance of being able to sort the problem out quickly. (Something the cast have discovered the hard way more than once, especially with the snowplough from hell...)
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 19:16:15 GMT
Using a shopping centre has a whole host of potential production/filming problems. If the parking lot is being used then filming would be disruptive to the normal running of the centre, and all those people would most likely also disrupt filming. Closing the lot down would probably not go down well with the centre, and certainly not with those stores closest to that part of the lot, as they would argue that this will cause a drop in trade - meaning they would end up asking for far more money than MB has to close the lot down for them. Using a vacant lot runs into other problems, principally transportation of items (or cars) to fill it enough for testing. Even if they are using cars from a scrap yard, and the owner allows them to take vehicles for no cost, they still have to get those cars to the lot - which again would cost far more money than MB have as well as being a logistical nightmare to set up. There is a reason that they have filmed driving myths that require a course at the Police driver training centre - they can use equipment that is already there. As I think I've noted before, I try to look at things from the production viewpoint when browsing through ideas. This means that I look at ideas, or more specifically testing procedures, in terms of what would be cheapest and easiest to do. Minimal equipment, building, time needed, permissions, crew numbers and logistics. If you can boil things down to the fastest and cheapest tests then the show has the option to increase the complexity/costs involved to make things bigger and better - Or just to go off on a slight tangent and test something else. Besides, keeping things as simple as possible means there is less to go wrong and when something does go wrong you have a good chance of being able to sort the problem out quickly. (Something the cast have discovered the hard way more than once, especially with the snowplough from hell...) they could make it a simulated shopping center, then. it would only take a couple sheets of plywood per car to make simulated cars, and they could do it on one of the many facilities they have used for large area tests in the past - or they could use a stadium parking area when the stadium was not in operation. then they could take a minimalist approach to the storefronts - since really all they NEED to have is signboards, and those would be easy to fabricate, as well. and they COULD double it up with tests of what is the best parking strategy; because that is a testable thing, as well.
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 31, 2013 20:14:40 GMT
Testing parking strategies strikes me as a good idea, in fact that appeals to me more than the original idea about slow speeds since; It would be easier to test. It could be done in a real parking lot without disrupting anything, as they could use car mounted cameras on (secured) vehicles and possibly even CCTV footage to keep track of where they were parking/driving. Something that probably wouldn't work for the OP due to the low quality of the cameras in such places and the need to show a lot of such footage. If you are just looking at parking though you could intersperse CCTV footage with that from the dash-cam as the former is just needed to show where the car is. There would be several techniques to look at, such as if it is better to try and park close to the store and spend more time looking for a space. Or if parking further away and walking is better as you are more likely to find a space quickly. I'm also going to guess that someone somewhere has worked out the science of parking. There would be clear results, much clearer than for the OP. Find a shopping centre, pick a particular lot (ideally a busy one) and a particular store. Then time the cast from the moment they enter the lot to the moment they walk into the store (The store should not be the one right outside the lot to keep things fairly balanced.) They could then test to see which position is better to get out of, by picking up something reasonably heavy from their chosen store (they don't have to buy anything, a box full of weights would do just fine) and seeing how long it takes them to get from the store, back to the car and then out of the lot*. The logic here would be that there is likely to be more traffic closest to the store, so it might take longer to pull out. They could combine these times to see if one of them is faster (and hence better) than the other. (*They would omit time spent at the checkout, as this is something unpredictable and could mess up the results. We are only interested in what parking strategy gets up into and out of the centre fastest, not the unpredictability of standing at the checkout.) Needs a little work to nail down a number of techniques and variations - I'd say close to, medium distance and far away but there may be more - but this does strike me as a good testable and practical myth. And of course one that could be useful to viewers.... *Edit* And this is why we discuss ideas. Occasionally you end up with a different but possibly 'better' idea than the one you started with.
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Post by the light works on Dec 31, 2013 20:54:41 GMT
Personally, for routine shopping, I prefer to pull up in front of the target (entrance or store) and then drive away while looking for a space - that allows me to grab the first space offered. in peak (pack) times, I tend to avoid coming close to the entrance; because everybody else is typically orbiting the entrance trying to score a prime space (and I particularly hate one parking garage which is laid out such that one has to pass the entrance in either entering the garage or leaving it; I forget which)
our local "McMall" (Blazerrose may know what I am talking about) is set up with "courtyard" parking inside the perimeter of stores; and then a two story parking lot behind (which is limited to 6 feet clearance; so nothing I normally drive can fit in it.)any of the busy times, I completely avoid pulling into the interior at all, because of the congestion. fortunately, since I am normally driving my work truck, I can justify parking in the RV parking provided around the perimeter of the property.
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Post by OziRiS on Jan 1, 2014 3:10:05 GMT
You might also want to add the parameter of how you choose to park once you've found your space. I usually back into the space, which takes maybe 10 seconds longer than just going in front first, but I've noticed that it gets me out of the space again much faster, since my view is better and I spend less time making sure I have a clear path to get out.
I actually timed this over a period of 2 months once, since my girlfriend thought it was rediculous that I spent the extra time backing in to the space every time. I found out that on average I spend between 5 and 10 seconds longer on backing in than when going in front first (usually depends on how good a parking job the other shoppers have done), but between 20 and 45 seconds less on getting out again, since I can start the car, roll the front out, clearly see if anyone's in my way and which side I can safely turn to and then leave.
When I have to back out of the space, I first have to see if someone's directly behind me, then inch out slowly to make sure no one's about to walk behind my car from one of the sides, then inch out a little further to see which side I can safely turn to without hitting another car, a shopping cart or a pedestrian, then turn, put the car in forward gear and leave. All of that has to do with how much (or little) I can see out of my rear and side windows.
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Post by the light works on Jan 1, 2014 5:56:08 GMT
You might also want to add the parameter of how you choose to park once you've found your space. I usually back into the space, which takes maybe 10 seconds longer than just going in front first, but I've noticed that it gets me out of the space again much faster, since my view is better and I spend less time making sure I have a clear path to get out. I actually timed this over a period of 2 months once, since my girlfriend thought it was rediculous that I spent the extra time backing in to the space every time. I found out that on average I spend between 5 and 10 seconds longer on backing in than when going in front first (usually depends on how good a parking job the other shoppers have done), but between 20 and 45 seconds less on getting out again, since I can start the car, roll the front out, clearly see if anyone's in my way and which side I can safely turn to and then leave. When I have to back out of the space, I first have to see if someone's directly behind me, then inch out slowly to make sure no one's about to walk behind my car from one of the sides, then inch out a little further to see which side I can safely turn to without hitting another car, a shopping cart or a pedestrian, then turn, put the car in forward gear and leave. All of that has to do with how much (or little) I can see out of my rear and side windows. firefighters are trained to habitually back into the parking space, because it is much safer to go forward to leave. a statistically significant number of accidents involve a firefighter striking their child when backing out of their driveway. however, in store parking lots, I usually nose in. with the big box on my truck, it is hard to back into a tight parking space; and I usually can't see the car behind me at all. of course, as silver will attest - it is a pain to back out of the space, too; because nobody comprehends "big truck going backwards may not notice you sneaking behind it" my preferred option is to pull through and park facing out; and there are times I will park further away to facilitate that.
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