Session 358. There it was, I thought, as part of the 90th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) that took place in Washington, D.C., in January 2011. Readers will recall from my March column that this session has important information being discussed from among three presentations. They included:

1) Best Practices for Outdoor Advertising Control: Report from FHWA’s International Scan;

2) Public Attitudes Toward Roadside Outdoor Advertising Signs: Forty Years of Surveys, Interviews, and Unsolicited Opinions; and

3) Driver Visual Attention in the Presence of Commercial Electronic Variable Message Signs.That third presentation was the bombshell, or the absence of one, when Christopher A. Monk of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) stood up to present the results of “Phase 2” of federally-funded research into possible driver distraction from EMCs.

PHASE 2 FHWA STUDY RESULTS

With a full room at rapt attention, Monk started into a PowerPoint presentation on the 2010 research, only to announce that the data results would not be forthcoming, with results released “hopefully, in upcoming months.” The whiff of federal agency politics hung in the air that afternoon, with a FHWA representative candidly admitting there were “a lot of sensitivities involved.”

Ok, but certainly a TRB attendee could reference the Monk slides as some starting point to keep track of this research, incomplete as it was in January. After all, the TRB launched an “online portal” recently with this description:“New! The slides and posters of the more than 3,500 program presentations and videos of more than 40 high-profile sessions at the 2011 TRB 90th Annual Meeting are now available through this TRB Annual Meeting Online (AMOnline) Portal. This content is in addition to the 2,200+ papers that make up the meeting’s Compendium of Papers, which is already accessible on this portal. In one search, this portal allows users to quickly find all available papers, visual aids, and recordings by session, presentation, author, subject area, and more.”

GONE, AND INTENDED TO BE FORGOTTEN?

Just a small detail, though. Search for “Monk, Christopher” as a presentation author and nothing is shown in results. Search for “Driver Visual Attention in the Presence of Commercial Electronic Variable Message Signs” and no presentation is listed. Search for “Session 358” and only the first two sessions listed above are available.

That third session has disappeared, a strange crease for the TRB, an organization that touts itself as scientific in nature. All meeting presentations available, online, except for those deemed politically controversial.Just in case you thought that all the presentations and papers related to variable message signs were wiped from the collective memory of the 90th TRB meeting, that so amazingly comprehensive “Online Portal” does included links to three papers presented at the conference.

First was a paper titled, “Empirical Analysis and Modeling of Drivers’ Response to Variable Message Signs in Shanghai, China.” This paper, prepared for the Ministry of Transport in China, analyzed the impact of variable message signs on drivers’ “en-route behavior.”Second was a paper titled, “Assessing Effectiveness of Changeable Message Signs on Secondary Crashes.” This paper, prepared for the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California–Irvine, analyzed the impact of CMS on helping drivers avoid a second accident when a first accident has already happened.

Finally a paper was presented titled, “Driver Comprehension of Messages for Truck-Mounted Changeable Message Signs During Mobile Maintenance.” This paper was prepared for the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. It analyzed the effectiveness of a fairly new use of CMS on the back of trucks ahead of highway maintenance crews.And lest you think the subject of driver distraction also has disappeared from the annals of the 90th TRB meeting, consider the findings from this session titled, “Nature and Prevalence of Novice Driver Distraction from In-Vehicle Cameras.” The authors were sponsored by the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina.

TEENAGE DRIVERS FACE THE REAL DRIVING WORLD

Translated into English, this research on the “novice driver” was a look at teenager driving and what sources of distraction were most often detected. I’m going to go ahead and spoil the next paragraphs to let you know that electronic message signs did not make the cut for what most distracted teens while driving.

For those legitimately worried about distracted driving, this research took another step in an area the team admitted had little empirical data. Fifty-two high school age licensed drivers were monitored over six months in cars equipped with relatively unobtrusive in-vehicle cameras. In total, more than 24,000 camera “clips” got recorded, of which more than 4,400 were analyzed in detail, with a teenage driver driving alone, or with one, two or three (or more) passengers.And here are the most prevalent distraction factors: loud music (found in 18% of the clips); singing (15%); loud conversation with a passenger (13%); cellphone use (7%); and horseplay (6% of the clips.) As I said, EMCs did not figure in the possible distractions faced by the upcoming generation of motorists.

Somewhere in this data is a ray of hope for the on-premise sign industry, if we are limber enough to find it. Maybe next year, a representative from the FHWA can flesh this data out more at the 91st TRB meeting. Title will be, “Novice Driver Visual Attention in the Presence of Commercial Electronic Variable Message Signs.” Don’t miss it.