Behavioural safety science

Researcher profile

Dr Judith Charlton
Associate Director, Behavioural Safety Science

"Understanding and managing human behaviour is critical to being able to meet the challenge of preventing injury and improving safety."

Leading researchers

Dr Marilyn Johnson

Dr Sjaanie Koppel

Dr Carlyn Muir

Jim Langford

Michelle Scully

Search our reports

Each year our staff produce reports on a broad range of topics across the spectrum of injury prevention.

Executive training

From 2012 MIRI will offer advanced training in road safety management and leadership.

The Behavioural Safety Science team improves transport safety using our research expertise in psychology, health sciences, education and social science to reduce road crashes and injury severity.

We engage with local and international government, industry and professional groups, and measure the success and impact of our research when translated into policy and practice.

We use the MUARC instrumented vehicle fleet as well as the MUARC advanced and portable simulator laboratories in our research. These include:

  • instrumented vehicles to monitor eye movement, speed, braking and steering
  • in-vehicle cameras to study driver and passenger behaviour
  • fixed cameras to study cyclist, pedestrian and driver behaviour at intersections
  • bicycle helmet-mounted cameras to study cyclist-driver behaviour.

Older driver research - Ozcandrive

As the baby boomer population ages, there is an urgent need to understand more about the next wave of older road users and how to effectively manage their safe mobility.

Ozcandrive is a significant program of research addressing the big issues in older driver safety. Using a longitudinal study design and naturalistic driving methods, the project will track the health, functional abilities and driving patterns of 1300 older drivers for five years. We are collaborating with international colleagues in the parallel Canadian study, Candrive.

The results will help us develop a simple, objective screening tool that will assist health-care professionals to identify older drivers who may be unsafe and need further assessment of their driving ability.

Funded through the Australian Research Council Linkage Scheme with industry and government partners, the project is a collaboration between MUARC, Monash University Faculty of Medicine, La Trobe University, University of Ottawa, VicRoads, the Victorian Department of Justice, the Victorian Transport Accident Commission, the New Zealand Road Safety Trust and Eastern Health.