University of Washington

• Project: An Innovative Survey Design to Understand Sustainable Travel Behaviors • PI: Cynthia Chen (UW) • Co-Investigators: Anne Vernez Moudon (UW), Qing Shen (UW), Hejun Kang (UI) An innovative survey is being undertaken with rolling samples to address a major fiscal challenge faced by many MPOs. Faced with a small, but continuous budget, MPOs are increasingly unable to continue the current survey practice: conducting a large survey every 10 years. A rolling sample design also has other benefits over the current practice. Yet, for its implementation in household travel surveys, many questions exist. Some are technical issues, while others are cost and procedural-related. The primary purpose of this project is to understand these issues and provide recommendations for a future household travel survey with rolling samples. It is also expected that a rolling sample design can help us understand travel behavior better for the purpose of VMT reduction. By sampling participants living in very different neighborhoods, it can help us devise better VMT reduction strategies. The second purpose of this project is to assess the potential of a rolling sample design in addressing the potential of land use and infrastructure related strategies for VMT reduction. We anticipate taking a three-pronged approach: an extensive review of the relevant issues, a pilot data collection effort with a survey with rolling enrollment, and the analysis of the survey administration process as well as the data collected. The research will help transportation planners and analysts to proactively reposition their service in light of the changing budgetary environment by developing a new approach to travel surveys based on small samples but continuous enrollment. This new approach is also more consistent with the recent changes in data collection methods used by the US Census Bureau. The proposed research will also enable researchers to gain a much better understanding of the potential of designing a new methodology for empirical examinations of the effects of built environments on transportation outcomes based on data collected from continuous enrollment. • Project: Educating Teenage Drivers in the Pacific Northwest Regarding the Dangers of Distracted Driving • PI: David S. Hurwitz (OSU) • Co-Investigators: Bryan Vila (WSU), Ahmed Abdel-Rahim (UI), Linda Boyle (UW), Billy Connor (UAF) Driver distraction can be defined as the diversion of driver attention away from the driving task, and it can result from factors both within and outside of the vehicle (Sheridan, 2004). It can include anything that distracts a driver from the primary task of driving and has been categorized as follows: visual (e.g., reading a map), auditory (e.g., listening to a conversation), biomechanical (e.g., tuning a radio), and cognitive (e.g. 'being lost in thought,' and 'looking but not seeing') (Ranney et al., 2000). Most distractions are actually a combination of these, thus it may be more useful to categorize distractions according to the task that drivers are engaged in while driving (rather than the combination of the forms of distractions). For example, cell phones are associated with cognitive, auditory, biomechanical, and potentially, visual distractions. As teenage drivers gain moderate levels of experience, they also tend to have greater crash risks related to driver distraction when compared to drivers in other age groups (Lam, 2002). One proposed explanation for this is that younger drivers appear more willing to accept new technologies and devices than other drivers. As younger drivers become confident in their driving abilities, they tend to over-estimate their ability to multitask with these devices while driving (Sarkar and Andreas, 2004). Poysti et al. (2005) also found that young drivers, from 18- to 24-years old, were more likely to use their cell phones while driving than middle-aged drivers. The goal of the study is to examine driver distraction among teenagers including what tasks they consider to be distracting as compared to their level of engagement in these same distracting tasks. This study differs from other studies in that a follow-up period will be used to identify differences in response based on feedback and education on distraction. - 2012-2013 Annual Report 9

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