The psychological approach to the problem of road accidents / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
[1935?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychological approach to the problem of road accidents / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    {Reprinted from Nature, Vol. 136, page 740, November 9, 1935.) The Psychological Approach to the Problem of Road Accidents* By Dr. Charles S. Myers, C.B.E., F.R.S., Principal of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology TT is well recognised that the problem of road accidents may be approached from various aspects, for example, the statistical and the engineering aspects. In this paper I consider the approach made by the psychologist—whose special training should render him expert in considering and advising on the part played by £the human factor’ which, it has been estimated, enters into eighty to ninety per cent of road accidents. The psychologist cannot, of course, neglect the value of statistical data ; indeed he is bound frequently to use them. Nor is he by any means unconcerned with engineering and other similar mechanical factors. But all these must be his servants rather than his masters ; he has to regard them in their subservient relation to his psychological and physiological knowledge—his knowledge of the living mind and body. Many statistical data, for example, appear to the psychologist as vitiated, if not valueless, because they have been collected and treated without the foresight of pitfalls, and without the care in framing questions, which would have been employed by one trained in psychological experi¬ ment and in psycho-physical methods. So, too, the merely mechanical perfection, say, of car signals and of car controls (levers and pedals) does not content the psychologist. He would institute an inquiry into which of their manifold forms and positions best and least satisfy the human requirements of the driver or pedestrian ; no such investigation has yet been made, at all events in Great Britain. Or again, while recognising the proved value of traffic signals, the psychologist would ascertain their best mode, form^fj4fiiglitv.-jetc^, — * A paper at a joint discussion in Sections G (Engin^eiiikif and J (Psychology) of the British Association read at Norwich on Septem- U10,1935. 1 CHARLES MYERS I LIBRARY I NATIONAL INSTITUTE Si INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY 1 - . inn ncrv QTRPPT I fiuDON. W 1.