Mindfulness and Driver Behaviour Research by Dr Victoria Kroll

“Dr Victoria Kroll is a published Traffic and Transport Psychologist. Victoria previously worked alongside Prof David Crundall at Nottingham Trent University as his lead researcher on numerous successful projects aimed at improving road safety. Victoria now runs their spin-out company from the University, Esitu Solutions, with the aim of commercialising their research for the fleet driver trainer market. Victoria is going to be speaking about a project that she worked on at NTU, where they examined the potential of mindfulness training for improving driver safety.

Mindfulness is a mental state that is achieved through techniques derived from Buddhist meditation. Studies have shown that mindfulness can have health benefits and an improvement in a number of higher-order cognitive functions. Many of these functions are crucial to safe driving, as such it has been suggested that mindfulness might be a useful tool to improve driver safety and reduce the impact of negative emotion on driving.

Across three studies, they examined at the impact of a 12- and 3-hour mindfulness course on drivers’ behaviour. This included measuring participants performance on a video-based hazard perception test, a road-rage test, mind-wandering test, driving simulator and even driving in the real world. Victoria will talk about each of the three studies individually and discuss the research methodology underpinning each study, as well as the final conclusions from the project.”