HFASt Lab won two best paper awards at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society that was hosted in Washington DC.

 

Dr. Dengbo He and Dr. Birsen Donmez received the Jerome H. Ely Best Paper Award. Dr. Dengbo He is currently a faculty member at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Dr. Chelsea DeGuzman and Dr. Birsen Donmez received, the Best Student Paper Award from Surface Transportation Technical Group with their paper titled “Factors Influencing Trust in Advanced Driver Assistant Systems for Current Users”. Dr. DeGuzman is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the HFASt Lab.

 

 

Our lab’s research on visual checks during right turns at red light got featured in a recent news article on the Guardian.

The article examines the increasing pedestrian deaths in the US and discussing whether allowing right turns during red light should be re-evaluated. Prof. Birsen Donmez gave an interview explaining how the drivers could fail looking at the correct spots for pedestrians when turning right at red light because the driver also has to attend to the incoming traffic to seize traffic gap for an opportunity to make the turn.

To read the full news article and Prof. Birsen Donmez’s interview and insights, please visit the Guardian page.

You can read more about our on-road studies investigating the visual attention allocation on turns and vulnerable road user safety by visiting our publications.

Alia Galal wins an Excellence Award in the 2023 Canada Safest Employers Awards (CSEAs) Competition, organized by the Occupational Health and Safety Magazine. 

For the 13th year, the annual CSEAs is the leading independent awards program in the profession of occupational health and safety. The awards recognize health and safety professionals and companies for their outstanding achievements, leadership and innovation over the past 12 months.

This award falls under the Minerva Rising Star of the Year Award Category of the CSEAs, which is specifically dedicated to full time post-secondary students from Canadian universities or colleges in undergraduate, graduate, or coop programs as well as employees with 2 or less years of work experience since graduation. The list of awards and awardees can be found here:  https://safestemployers.com/winners-and-excellence-awardees/2023-excellence-awardees/?q=2023#theitem3933

More information about Canada’s Safest Employers Awards can be found here: https://safestemployers.com

HFASt research was recognized as a best paper finalist for the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Mechatronics for the paper titled “Classification of Driver Cognitive Load Based on Physiological Data: Exploring Recurrent Neural Networks.”

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Congratulations to Alia Galal who received the Best Poster Award at the 2022 Conference of the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP) for:

• Galal, A., Donmez, B., Roorda, M. (2022).  Improving truck driver and vulnerable road user interactions through driver training: A subject matter expert interview study. Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals Conference 2022.  Sudbury. June 19-22.

Alia is a third year PhD candidate in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto supervised by Professor Matthew Roorda and Professor Birsen Donmez, and is involved with the City Logistics for the Urban Economy (CLUE) project as well as the Smart Freight Centre.

Alia’s PhD research combines freight transportation, human factors and traffic safety as she analyzes truck drivers’ skills, behaviour, and interactions with vulnerable road users using a truck simulator.

The aim of her research is to develop a truck driver training module specifically addressing latent hazard anticipation skills with the goal of improving traffic and vulnerable road user safety in Canada and worldwide.

Alia is the president of UT-ITE, the University of Toronto student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and the vice president for learning and development of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers (GradSWE) at the University of Toronto.

She said that being recognized for her hard work and efforts encourages and motivates her.

“It was a great honour and a very welcome surprise to be a winner at my first in-person conference. It felt like an external validation of my research and gave me great energy to proceed forward.” – Alia Galal

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Reposted from University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute

Original News link: https://uttri.utoronto.ca/news/alia-galal-receives-best-poster-award-from-canadian-association-of-road-safety-professionals/

An article by the Science Times used research by the HFASt lab to highlight the overreliance on AV technology. Lead author, Dengbo He, noted that future automated vehicles should be designed with the driver’s attention in mind.

 

Link to article

Link to study

A study by researchers Dengbo He, Dina Kanaan, and Professor Birsen Donmez at U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering reveals some in-vehicle displays can lead to drivers being over-reliant on automated systems. The lead author of the study, Dengbo He, notes that AV technology gives drivers a false sense of security, which may impede driver performance.

Link to article

Link to study

To better understand vehicle accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians, researchers at U of T are working with the City of Guelph to study how drivers’ attention and gaze are affected at intersections.

Link to article