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Page 12
Page 7
NEW ZEALAND’S leading traffic and road
safety research group, based at the University
of Waikato, is moving to a purpose-built lab
which will enhance its capacity and bring its
research arms into a central location.
The new laboratory will house the
Applied Cognitive Psychology group’s
psychophysiology lab, eye-tracking lab,
and New Zealand’s most advanced driving
simulator. These laboratories form the core of
the Traffic and Road Safety (TARS) research
group and will allow TARS to further
enhance its already highly-regarded research.
Associate Professor Sam Charlton, a
specialist in road safety and transportation
psychology, says the new lab will make
it much easier to co-ordinate research
and being all in the one place, it will be
much more efficient. The former TARS labs
were spread across a number of different
locations in Hamilton.
“It also means that all our postgraduate
students can work together, which just wasn’t
possible before,” he says. “Being an education
institute as well as a research provider, one of
the key goals of TARS is training tomorrow's
road safety researchers.” The Applied
GOOD DRIVING: Psychology research technician Rob Bakker, road-testing inWaikato University’s newTraffic and Road Safety Laboratory.
NZ junior cyclist Kate Stewart
NEW ZEALAND’S junior track cyclists won
two gold, a silver and two bronze medals at
their world champs, held in Seoul, South Korea
last month.
They had to ride in temperatures of 30
degrees plus with humidity as high as 90% and
they used the University of Waikato testing lab
at the Avantidrome in Cambridge to assist their
preparation for the steamy conditions.
University of Waikato sports scientist Joe
McQuillan says it can take up to 10 days to
adapt to such environmental conditions so
it was important to prepare the 14 cyclists,
mostly high school students, before they arrived
in Korea.
“The cyclists had to travel from a New
Zealandwinter to an environmentally challenging
climate. Without any acclimation, the initial
days in Seoul would require a reduction in
training load, affecting the final stages of
preparation for the event. We circumvented
this somewhat by providing a stepping stone
from a cool wintery climate to hot and humid.”
For the five controlled heat sessions, they
cranked up the heat in the lab and checked
the riders’ thermal comfort and performance
measures every 15 minutes of their 60
minute sessions.
“We balanced their feedback with how
much ‘heat stress’ we wanted to put them
under and assessed how they coped in general.
We also monitored their body weight and liquid
drunk before and after the session to ascertain
who sweats more.” Some riders lost more than
2kg during their hour-long session.
As well as preparing for trying conditions,
the information they gathered in the lab
also assisted coaches to know which athletes
might need to monitor hydration and fatigue
levels during actual competition.
Head coach Ross Machejefski says
working with the university was very useful.
“Not just having access to the lab but also
to be able to talk about different aspects of
the riders' training. With BikeNZ’s sports
scientists in Glasgow, it was good having Joe
here with his knowledge to call on.”
Hotting up for the
world junior champs
New lab
drives TARS
to bright
future
Cognitive group and TARS come under
the umbrella of the School of Psychology
in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
Waikato University.
Since being formed in 1993, TARS has
carried out important research into issues
ranging from truck driver fatigue, distractions
produced by cell phones, perceptions of risk,
safety at intersections, the design of road
worker's safety vests, patterns of driving
behaviour in New Zealand, the design of
overtaking lanes, the effectiveness of road signs,
urban threshold design, and many other topics.
TARS also carried out research which
informed the recent government decision to
decrease the blood alcohol limit when driving
from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100ml of
blood, to 50mg. The change takes place on
1 December.
TARS and the Applied Cognitive group
have conducted externally-funded research
for organisations such as the New Zealand
Transport Agency and the AA Research
Foundation. In addition, the laboratories are
used extensively for teaching and have often
been featured in national news media on issues
such as the impact of alcohol on driving and the
use of cellphones by drivers.
In 2005, TARS won a prestigious Motoring
Excellence Award in Road Safety Research from
the Automobile Association, New Zealand.
S P R I N G 2 0 1 4
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R E S E A R C H , I NNOVAT I ON AND E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P AT T H E UN I V E R S I T Y O F WA I K ATO
