Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, United Kingdom.
Psychol Sci. 2011 Apr;22(4):429-34. doi: 10.1177/0956797611400917. Epub 2011 Mar 9.
Almost all locomotor animals respond to visual looming or to discrete changes in optical size. The need to detect and process looming remains critically important for humans in everyday life. Road traffic statistics confirm that children up to 15 years old are overrepresented in pedestrian casualties. We demonstrate that, for a given pedestrian crossing time, vehicles traveling faster loom less than slower vehicles, which creates a dangerous illusion in which faster vehicles may be perceived as not approaching. Our results from perceptual tests of looming thresholds show strong developmental trends in sensitivity, such that children may not be able to detect vehicles approaching at speeds in excess of 20 mph. This creates a risk of injudicious road crossing in urban settings when traffic speeds are higher than 20 mph. The risk is exacerbated because vehicles moving faster than this speed are more likely to result in pedestrian fatalities.
几乎所有的运动动物都会对视觉逼近或光大小的离散变化做出反应。在日常生活中，人类需要检测和处理逼近现象。道路交通统计数据证实，15 岁以下的儿童在行人伤亡中占比过高。我们证明，对于给定的行人穿越时间，行驶速度较快的车辆比行驶速度较慢的车辆逼近时显得更小，这会造成一种危险的错觉，即人们可能会认为较快的车辆不会靠近。我们对逼近阈值的感知测试结果显示出敏感性的强烈发展趋势，即儿童可能无法检测到速度超过 20 英里/小时的车辆。在城市环境中，当交通速度超过 20 英里/小时时，这就增加了不恰当地穿越道路的风险。风险会加剧，因为速度超过此速度的车辆更有可能导致行人死亡。
