Surface Transportation Technical Group

Schepens Eye Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, has an IMMEDIATE opening for a postdoctoral fellow to work with Dr Gang Luo in the Mobility and Vision Rehabilitation Center. The available position is to assist in a NIH funded project of driving behaviors of visually impaired people. Natural driving activities of participants in the real world will be collected over a long period of time using a novel in-car recording system developed in Dr. Luo's lab, and the vast amount of data will be analyzed using computerized programs. The research projects also include studies in the state-of-art driving simulator. Results will help understand the safety of driving by visually impaired, which is currently permitted in more than 40 US states. The ideal candidate will have completed their PhD, and have a strong background in driving research. Computer programming or electronic hardware skill would be advantageous. Ability to work independently is important. Applications should be

by Carol Pollack-Nelson Each year, HFES recognizes a person for outstanding contributions to human factors aspects in the broad area of safety. It is a tradition of the Surface Transportation Technical Group to invite the winner to submit a column for the newsletter. The 2011 recipient of the A. R. Lauer Safety Award and author of this year’s Lauer Letter is Carol Pollack-Nelson, principal of Independent Safety Consulting in Rockville, Maryland. Read more about her work in the HFES Bulletin . Today I read about a “near-miss” experienced by Mike and Carrie Krug, parents of 2-year-old triplets ( KXAN.com, 2012 ). The Krugs live in a home with an in-ground swimming pool. Understandably, they were concerned about the drowning risk it presented to their three toddlers. To address their concern, these parents spent $2,300 to have a “safety net” installed over their pool. “The salesperson told me that if our children got out on the net they would never get wet,” Mike Krug said in the ar