Highway Transportation System

Driver’s Ed Highway Transportation System ●Purpose is to move people/cargo from one place to another in a safe and efficient manner; the most complex transportation system

●3 parts:

○Roadway users ○Vehicles ○Roadways ●Federal government passed two laws ○National Highway Safety Act— vehicle registration, driver’s license, traffic courts, highway construction and maintenance ○National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act— requires automakers to install certain safety features into each car IPDE Process ●Major cause of death for ages 15-24 is vehicle crashes caused by lack of experience ●IPDE Process— organized system for seeing, thinking, and responding during driving task ●Need to know when, where, how, and what to look for ●Acronym for identify, predict, decide, execute 1 / 2

2 ○Identify important information ○Predict conflict (avg reaction time=¾ of a sec) ○Decide when/where/how to communicate, adjust speed, and change position to avoid conflict ○Execute the correct actions to prevent conflict Zone Locations ●A zone is 1 of 6 areas of space around a vehicle that is the width of a lane and extends as far as the driver can see ●Open zone is a space where you can drive without a restriction to line of sight or intended path of travel ●Line of sight is distance you can see ahead ●Intended path is space your vehicle will occupy ●Target area is far in front of you, 12-15 second range is space you will travel in 12-15 seconds, 4-6 second range is space you will travel in 4-6 seconds (need to get a final update of how you are controlling your intended path) ●Orderly visual search pattern is a process of searching critical areas in a regular sequence; look for clues Vision, Identification, Prediction ●Field of vision is the area you can see around you while looking straight ahead ●Central vision is the area you can see clearly ●Peripheral vision is the area you can see to the left and right of central vision; important for seeing other people from your sides ●Depth perception is the ability to judge the relative distance of objects correctly.Always look ahead 12-15 seconds into you target area ●Glance continually and quickly through your orderly visual search patterns ●In the city, look for these clues: intersections, parked cars, pedestrians, traffic ●Ground viewing is making quick glances to the roadway in front of your vehicle ●When a road changes from multi- to single-lane, it will be marked with a sign

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