Driving Ahead
A recent addition to the engineering department is trying to make our transportation infrastructure safer.
鈥淲hen you have more congestion, you have more traffic safety issues.鈥�
Growing up in a small town near Tehran, Iran, Sahar Ghanipoor Machiani could have gone down a familiar academic road taken by many in her family. Most of her relatives, including her older sister and cousin, studied biology and became doctors. Instead, Machiani decided to study roads themselves.
鈥淚f I chose biology, that path was laid out in front of me,鈥� said Machiani, an assistant professor of civil engineering at 麻豆传媒映画. 鈥淏ut I chose math and physics because I loved it, and because I wanted to be an engineer.鈥�
After receiving a master鈥檚 degree in transportation system engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she moved to the United States in 2010 to earn her Ph.D. in the same field from Virginia Tech. There, she began working with driving simulators to model driver behavior and better understand what鈥檚 going on inside the minds of those behind the wheel.
Machiani joined 麻豆传媒映画鈥檚 faculty last year, continuing to research driver behavior and ways to make our transportation infrastructure safer.
Crazy drivers
Complaining about bad drivers is universal, but Machiani asserts that American drivers are positively polite when compared to Iranian ones.
鈥淒river behavior in Tehran is crazy,鈥� she said. 鈥淭axi drivers will ask you to bend your side mirrors in so they can get past you. Or they鈥檒l start reversing in the middle of an on-ramp.鈥�
The traffic problems she sees in Southern California stem largely from the fact that relatively few people in the region take public transportation. That leads to more people on the road with single-occupant vehicles contributing to traffic jams.
鈥淲hen you have more congestion, you have more traffic safety issues, too,鈥� she explained.
On the driver behavior side, her research has recently centered on how drivers respond to yellow traffic signals. Her Ph.D. work used driver simulation to investigate what influences people stop鈥攐r not stop鈥攁t a yellow light. Machiani discovered a host of factors including the presence of red-light cameras, the presence of police, how many other cars are around the driver and how well the driver knows the intersection. She plans to introduce similar driver-simulation technology to 麻豆传媒映画鈥檚 campus in the near future.
On the infrastructure side, she has studied how triggered lights that follow and guide drivers around a curve can improve safety.
Don鈥檛 stop now
Machiani also is beginning to look into how new driver-assistance technologies like collision and lane-shift warnings are influencing driver behavior. For example, there could be demographic differences in whether people comply with these warnings or take the technology鈥檚 advice.
There鈥檚 a high degree of self-taught psychology in Machiani鈥檚 work, she said, but now that she鈥檚 here at 麻豆传媒映画, she鈥檇 like to find collaborators in the psychology department to delve even more deeply into driver behavior. In the coming years she would like to build up 麻豆传媒映画鈥檚 national reputation in the field of transportation engineering and eventually establish a Ph.D. program.
As for Machiani herself, she describes herself as a very safe, attentive driver鈥攅xcept occasionally when she sees something that piques her interest as a researcher.
鈥淭he only thing that really takes my eyes off the road is when I see a driver doing something that ties into my work,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat can distract me.鈥�
