Fully automated self-driving cars, with expected benefits including improved road safety, are closer to becoming a reality. Thus, attention has turned to gauging public perceptions of these autonomous vehicles. To date, surveys have focused on the public as potential passengers of autonomous cars, overlooking other road users who would interact with them. Comparisons with perceptions of other existing vehicles are also lacking. This study surveyed almost 1,000 participants on their perceptions, particularly with regards to safety and acceptance of autonomous vehicles. Overall, results revealed that autonomous cars were perceived as a "somewhat low risk" form of transport and, while concerns existed, there was little opposition to the prospect of their use on public roads. However, compared to human-operated cars, autonomous cars were perceived differently depending on the road user perspective: more risky when a passenger yet less risky when a pedestrian. Autonomous cars were also perceived as more risky than existing autonomous trains. Gender, age and risk-taking had varied relationships with the perceived risk of different vehicle types and general attitudes towards autonomous cars. For instance, males and younger adults displayed greater acceptance.Whilst their adoption of this autonomous technology would seem societally beneficial -due to these groups' greater propensity for taking road user risks, behaviours linked with poorer road safetyother results suggested it might be premature to draw conclusions on risk-taking and user acceptance. Future studies should therefore continue to investigate people's perceptions from multiple perspectives, taking into account various road user viewpoints and individual characteristics.of such vehicles (Bansal et al., 2016;JD Power, 2013;Kyriakidis et al., 2015;Schoettle and Sivak, 2014;Smith, 2016). Perceptions from an external point of view, e.g. as pedestrians in an area with autonomous cars, have received little attention to date. Likewise, there has been little attempt to compare perceptions of autonomous cars with perceptions of other, existing vehicles. This paper reports findings of a survey with participants resident in the UK investigating perceptions of autonomous cars, particularly with regards to road safety and acceptance. Perceptions are compared in relation to road users (i.e. pedestrians as well as occupants of both human-operated and autonomous vehicles), risk (taking and perception), and participant gender and age. Road safetyThe act of driving is complex. Several motor and cognitive tasks must be performed, sometimes in quick succession, sometimes simultaneously, with drivers having to interact with and react to a variety of vehicular parameters, motorist and pedestrian behaviours, all in varying weather, lighting and road surface conditions. Due to these challenges, it is perhaps not surprising that things can go wrong, and the cost when it does is high. Each year, around the world, approximately 1.25 million people are killed and a further 20 to 50 mill...

There is a 24 month embargo from 24 December 2013 to 24 December 2015 in accordance with the journal's author permissions. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.The accepted version may be used on the following terms, which may be amended from time to time: Use by non-commercial users For non-commercial and non-promotional research and private study purposes individual users may view, print, download and copy self-archived articles, as well as text-and data-mine the content subject to the following conditions: ■The authors' moral rights are not compromised. These rights include the right of "paternity" (also known as "attribution" -the right for the author to be identified as such) and "integrity" (the right for the author not to have the work altered in such a way that the author's reputation or integrity may be impugned). All re-use must be fully attributed. ■Where content in the article is identified as belonging to a third party, it is the obligation of the user to ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owner of that content. ■Self-archived content may not be re-published verbatim in whole or in part, whether or not for commercial purposes, in print or online. This restriction does not apply to use of quotations with appropriate citation, or text and data mining provided that the mining output is restricted to short excerpts of text and data and excludes images (unless further consent is obtained from Wiley). 2 AbstractUnderstanding public risk perceptions and their underlying processes is important in order to learn more about the way people interpret and respond to hazardous emergency events. Direct experience with an involuntary hazard has been found to heighten the perceived risk of experiencing the same hazard and its consequences in the future but it remains unclear if cross-over effects are possible (i.e. experience with one hazard influencing perceived risk for other hazards also). Furthermore, the impact of objective risk and country of residence on perceived risk is not well understood. As part of the BeSeCu (Behaviour, Security and Culture) project a sample of 1045 survivors of emergencies from seven European countries (i.e. Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Turkey and Italy) was drawn. Results revealed heightened perceived risk for emergency events (i.e. domestic and public fires, earthquakes, floods and terrorist attacks) when the event had been experienced previously plus some evidence of cross-over effects, although these effects were not so strong. The largest country differences in perceived risk were observed for earthquakes, but this effect was significantly reduced by taking into account the objective earthquake risk. For fires, floods, terrorist attacks and traffic accidents, only small country differences in perceived risk were found. Further studies including a larger number of countries are welcomed.

Purpose. (1) To investigate the effects of emotional arousal and weapon presence on the completeness and accuracy of police officers' memories; and (2) to better simulate the experience of witnessing a shooting and providing testimony. Methods. A firearms training simulator was used to present 70 experienced police officers with either a shooting or a domestic dispute scenario containing no weapons. Arousal was measured using both self‐report and physiological indices. Recall for event details was tested after a 10‐minute delay using a structured interview. Identification accuracy was assessed with a photographic line‐up. Results. Self‐report measures confirmed that the shooting induced greater arousal than did the other scenario. Overall, officers' memories for the event were less complete, but more accurate, when they had witnessed the shooting. The recall and line‐up data did not support a weapon focus effect. Conclusions. Police officers' recall performance can be affected both qualitatively and quantitatively by witnessing an arousing event such as a shooting.

In the European multi‐centre study BeSeCu (Behaviour, Security, Culture), interviews were conducted in seven countries to explore survivors’ emotional, behavioural, and cognitive responses during disasters. Interviews, either in groups or one‐to‐one, were convened according to type of event: collapse of a building; earthquake; fire; flood; and terror attack. The content analysis of interviews resulted in a theoretical framework, describing the course of the events, behavioural responses, and the emotional and cognitive processing of survivors. While the environmental cues and the ability to recognise what was happening varied in different disasters, survivors’ responses tended to be more universal across events, and most often were adaptive and non‐selfish. Several peri‐traumatic factors related to current levels of post‐traumatic stress were identified, while memory quantity did not differ as a function of event type or post‐traumatic stress. Time since the event had a minor effect on recall. Based on the findings, several suggestions for emergency training are made.

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Structures are currently designed and typically constructed in accordance with prescriptive and performance-based methodologies to ensure a certain level of safety. The performance-based approach requires the quantification of both available safe egress time (ASET) and required safe egress time (RSET) to determine the degree of safety provided. This article focuses on the RSET side of the equation, for which an engineer would use some type of egress modelling approach to estimate evacuation performance. Often, simple engineering equations are applied to estimate the RSET value; however, over time, more sophisticated computational tools have appeared. Irrespective of the approach adopted, appropriate and accurate representation of human behavior in fire within these approaches is limited, mainly due to the lack of a comprehensive conceptual model of evacuee decision-making and behavior during fire emergencies. This article initially presents a set of behavioral statements that represent the primary elements of current understanding regarding evacuee behavior. Once presented, guidance is provided on how these behavioral statements might be incorporated by the model developer into an egress model. The intent here is to assist in the advancement of current egress models by outlining the model structures required to represent the current understanding of egress behavior.Keywords: Egress models, Evacuee behavior, Model development human behavior in fire BackgroundFor a building to be constructed and occupied, it must first be established that it provides a sufficient level of safety during a fire incident. Structures are typically designed and constructed in accordance with two regulatory approaches to ensure

BackgroundExamination of existing research on posttraumatic adjustment after disasters suggests that survivors’ posttraumatic stress levels might be better understood by investigating the influence of the characteristics of the event experienced on how people thought and felt, during the event as well as afterwards.ObjectiveTo compare survivors’ perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions across different types of disasters. Additionally, to investigate individual and event characteristics.DesignIn a European multi-centre study, 102 survivors of different disasters terror attack, flood, fire and collapse of a building were interviewed about their responses during the event. Survivors’ perceived posttraumatic stress levels were assessed with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception were rated retrospectively. Influences of individual characteristics, such as socio-demographic data, and event characteristics, such as time and exposure factors, on post- and peritraumatic outcomes were analyzed.ResultsLevels of reported post- and peritraumatic outcomes differed significantly between types of disasters. Type of disaster was a significant predictor of all three outcome variables but the factors gender, education, time since event, injuries and fatalities were only significant for certain outcomes.ConclusionResults support the hypothesis that there are differences in perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions after experiencing different types of disasters. However, it should be noted that these findings were not only explained by the type of disaster itself but also by individual and event characteristics. As the study followed an explorative approach, further research paths are discussed to better understand the relationships between variables.

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