Addressing Driver Behavior Issues in Automotive Personal Injury Claims

In order to address causation and liability in accidents involving vehicles, attorneys need to have an understanding of the many factors that can influence the behavior of vehicle operators and pedestrians.† The presentation will discuss scientific research on visual perception, environmental conditions, attention, fatigue, and reaction time.

1. Causes of vehicle accidents
   1. Human error contribution to accidents
   2. Risk and responsibility analyses
2. Accident reconstruction
   1. Role of human factors in accident reconstruction
   2. The Critical Distance concept
3. Visibility
   1. Visual acuity vs. visual contrast sensitivity
   2. Estimating visibility by calculation
   3. Determining visibility by observation
   4. Methods for representing visibility of a scene
   5. Fog, snow, rain
4. Perception-reaction time
   1. Alerted vs. surprised vs. emergency conditions
   2. Average RT vs. distribution of RT
5. Fatigue
   1. Clinical effects
   2. Risk studies
   3. Evidence of fatigue as contributing to an accident
6. Putting it all together
   1. Driver looking behavior
   2. Distraction and attention
   3. Scenario analysis