This is reminiscent of an experience we had at ClearHealth with managed hospital aesthetics. Not a scientific study in any sense, but as part of rebranding a hospital group, the color scheme was changed from a neutral green to a much brighter orange. The change coincided with a small but meaningful increase in mortality for procedures done on the associated floor. Enough that we reverted to the older aesthetic. The mortality change reverted as well. Chalked it up to coincidence. This process then repeated at two other separate campuses. I can't rule out this was some sort of reverse "Hawthorne Effect" where our communications about the change were the source of the problem but it bothered me enough to mostly put an end to our appetite for large scale aesthetic redesigns.
In one car I've driven, whenever you turn it on, a pop-up appears that says (paraphrasing): "Taking your eyes off the road to interact with this screen can cause an accident. Press OK to continue."<p>Irony...
Things I think should be disallowed:<p>- traffic messages that are displayed by rotating through three or more screens; two is fine if necessary, as you can ingest all of it in short order; but to keep staring at it waiting for the third screen is just way too dangerous<p>- digital advertising billboards, for the same reason; these are even worse because the ads are generally poorly designed with tiny fonts that are hard to read at a glance<p>I have a strong preference for an analog speedometer for the same reasons. In an instant your eyes can discern whether you are accelerating or decelerating. On a digital display, with a measly 1 MPH resolution, you have to keep looking down over and over to determine if you are maintaining your speed.
Hmm, idk. I don't like their modeling approach.<p>Their dependent variable is the number of crashes per hour, scaled by the "population average" for segments of the same length. I guess this is fine so long as you look at the same areas. They give two tests to try and control. One is checking upstream crashes but I kind of suspect the signage is positioned where you're supposed to be extra careful due to increase risk, so that may not be relevant. The other is looking at the same areas before and after. This does seem like a fair argument.<p>They also include specific effects for exact date-hour combos, but I feel like this is a bad approach as you would want to ideally capture higher level weekday + hour seasonality traits; not specific date hours.<p>They say on the multi variate:
> In particular, we show that clustering by segment-year-month reduces the standard error in half, clustering by just geography produces slightly smaller standard errors, controlling for rain more flexibly does not affect our results, not controlling at all for rain doubles our estimated treatment effect, not controlling for holidays increases our estimate slightly, and dropping hours immediately before and after campaign weeks (i.e., hours outside of campaign weeks that sometimes display fatality messages, see fig. S6) further increases our estimate<p>Which implies a lot of it may be random sample bias of the test set all being on worse weather days, even if they try to control for it here.<p>Regardless. I think it's a plausible analysis. The effect size is just 1-2% though.
This should be replicated outside of Texas. When I lived there my coworkers and I used to get a good laugh at the traffic signs like "do not drive into water". Who could be so dumb?<p>Actually of course texans are no dumber or smarter than anyone else, but there were very many opportunities for a laugh, parallel to the "known to the state of California to be harmful" signs. Still, it would be interesting to see if there are cultural differences before drawing too broad a conclusion.
I have had a long standing suspicion that the proposed attentional mechanism is the same reason why nagging someone almost never actually helps get something done, because it shifts their attention away from the actual activity and toward a negative social interaction.<p>Far better to restructure the environment so that the person can get the work done. In the case of traffic deaths we have really good data that says that you should change the structure of streets and roads so that people instinctively drive safely.
Sounds sort of like the near-irresistible impulse to achieve the high score in the "Your Speed Is" sign game.<p>I was bummed when they capped the reading at 70 on the signs in the I-5 mountain passes in Oregon, but that's Oregon for you, I guess. At least they let you pump your own gas now.
Near my parents house they painted dots on a dangerous road with signs "keep 2 dots apart". The dots didn't make much a different until someone painted pacman about to eat one of the dots on the road. Now the DOT repaints that pacman and thee average following distance is longer.
Reminds me of the "Werther Effect," a phenomenon where the publicity of suicides leads to a spike in suicide rates, particularly when reported in a sensationalist manner. - If the same principle applies to traffic crashes, then it's vital that to consider how and if this needs to be presented to the driver.<p>Edit: Changed the last paragraph to apply it to traffic.
I think that displaying this information on those DMS is a bad idea unless you give it some context.<p>In Texas they throw up the message similar to "1669 deaths this year on Texas roads" as in the article. Drivers who read the sign have no way of knowing whether this is lower than, higher than, or about the same as the number of deaths for that date in previous years. As the year goes by the number gets larger but there is still no context.<p>A better way to convey this information if you are going to do it at all would be use a reward/penalty message format that is readily understandable at highway speeds.<p>The message should be simple. For example - "Texas Traffic Fatalities lower this year than last. Good Job! Drive Friendly" or "Texas Traffic Fatalities higher this year than last. Drive Friendly"<p>That tells anyone reading exactly what they need to know and the message highlighting an improvement contains a simple reward message. When drivers become accustomed to seeing the message in this format they will immediately recognize that fatalities must be higher because the reward is missing from the message. That could trigger an effort to drive more safely.<p>Personally I hate the DMS signs and billboards. In a world where I made the rules there would be no billboards at all as the immortal Ogden Nash said:<p>I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree.<p>Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash (after Joyce Kilmer's poem about trees)<p>I would not allow any form of dynamic advertising along roads or highways. That means that if billboards are allowed there would be no LED billboards flashing a new message periodically and distracting drivers. All allowed billboards would be totally static and unless they advertised critical services for travelers they would be unlit at night. That means that no lighted billboards unless they are advertising travel-related infrastructure such as restaurants, clean restroom facilities available for travelers, auto towing, maintenance, or repair shops, etc. All advertised infrastructure can only be lighted during the hours when it is open and available for use by travelers. If the business is closed then the lights must be off.<p>There are already too many distractions for drivers with dash-mounted tablets, cell phone holders, navigation screens, and drivers do not need flashing shit along the road to distract them from the important task of maintaining a safe following distance from other traffic and monitoring other drivers on the road while scanning the highway for hazards along their route like traffic light status, objects in the roadway, unsecured loads, etc.
Highly recommend this "If Books Could Kill" episode on the concept of "nudges": <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nudge-part-1-a-simple-solution-for-littering-organ/id1651876897" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nudge-part-1-a-simple-...</a> (critical of the concept but I think quite fair and well-researched)
I don't even think it's a cognitive overload thing, it's a "oh shit, you're right, this is hard, skirrrrt" sort of thing.<p>Like telling someone they will do badly on a test and comparing them with a control group that isn't told that. Reverse placebo effect.
Haven't owned a car for years, but when I did, those signs just never... hit.. enough to warrant a significant behavior change. Obviously it <i>is</i> a lot, but that's just not how it feels while on the road. Can't imagine I'm the only one.
TLDR the strategy - "Let's add attention grabbing signs on poorly designed roads that are know to be dangerous instead of improving the road themselves" does not work.
Having signs on the side showing complex information (how is that metric defined, exactly?) unrelated to the task at hand (driving safely) won’t help much.<p>Showing relevant information with a clear impact on the driver has proven to work effectively: have color-coded feedback telling you that your insurance premium just went up when you drive too fast, erratically, too close to the car in front don’t look ahead, or turn without checking behind the mirrors and behind you.
how about you don't "nudge" i.e. attempt mass mind control in the first place. it's the same thing as dark patterns. involuntary experimentation on people, driven by analytics. if lying to people helps reduce car crashes by 1% and dog bites by 5%, let's roll out our lying operation nationwide
Anyone have any idea what the deal is with California's new:<p><pre><code> The 55 MPH Speed Limit Will Be Enforced
</code></pre>
dynamic signs?<p>If I get a speeding ticket, can I just argue that the sign's use of the future tense clearly indicates the lowered speed limit doesn't apply yet?
I’m pretty sure we do driver harrowing on purpose, here in Portugal. This is not to excuse rash driving, which is rampant, but rather to indicate the presence of sadistic individuals in our roadway infrastructure safety and design areas.