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Welcome to Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety from PDT Fleet Training. Each month, join host Hattie Hlad as she interviews experts on a wide range of topics within the logistics field.
[00:00:00] Hattie Hlad: Driven by Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety. Today we are joined by Dr. Victoria Kroll, CEO and co founder of Esitu Solutions. Esitu Solutions was founded by two traffic and transport psychologists, Dr. Vicky being one of those. With a collective experience of over 34 years in traffic psychology research, Esitu has been the platform to get their research out into the real world. Today we're going to find out what research they have undertaken and share the knowledge and outcomes for you, our listeners.
Vicky, thank you so much for being here today. We've been excited for you to join us here in the studio to share your plethora of work with us and our listeners. So for the benefit of our listeners, can we just roll back to the beginning of your journey into road risk academia? What inspired you to choose this area of expertise and what has your journey looked like into becoming Dr. Vicky Kroll?
[00:00:58] Victoria Kroll: Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me here, and that is a very big question, and hopefully I won't take too much time to answer it. So I kind of started my journey, first of all, doing a psychology degree at the University of Hulme, and when I finished that, I then thought, Oh, what am I going to do with my life? I don't know, and I was lucky enough to get a position at Nottingham Trent University, to get to do a PhD and part of that I did as a master's as well, and sort of during that journey, I did a lot of research into sort of visual cognition. So attention capture, a lot of the kind of fundamentals of cognitive psychology essentially and whilst I really, really, really liked that a lot of it's quite theoretical, so it doesn't really have a sort of real world element as it were and coming to the end of that journey, obviously that's quite a long one to get to that point, I sort of come out and think, okay, what am I going to do? And the typical sort of trip that, or thing that people go to do, is they go and to do, you know, sort of a post doctoral position and at that point, I was lucky enough to find out that one of the professors at NTU, so Professor David Crundell, had a position as a research assistant to develop hazard perception content for fire appliance drivers. So this was really my very, very sort of first sort of dip into the road safety world and obviously it was a great cause because it was working with the fire service as well, and from joining that kind of that project with him, it really allowed me to take the research skills that I'd learned to do in PhD to the real world, essentially. So somewhere where the research has a real impact and can make a difference and for me, I think that was the real, real good point of that. I wanted to do that and after that, David and I continued to work together. So we worked on several other projects at the university, all based around road safety and typically based around hazard awareness and risk taking skills of drivers and being able to kind of assess those but also train those as well.
So we worked with a national bus operator, we worked with, we did the HGV, so we developed tests for those, and we also then started to look at, okay, maybe we could take this outside of just being on the sort of normal computer screen, let's go into virtual reality, and we did that and then we also did some more things a little bit more off the cuff.
So we looked at how mindfulness intervention can help improve driver safety as well. So we did a lot of research that really was all based around improving driver skills, assessing their skills, and essentially making the roads a lot safer and off the back of that we, both David and I always knew that there was some commercial element for this and one of the things that I think for us as academics at the uni is that when you are a researcher at the university your research is kind of in the university and trying to get it out of the university can be quite tricky, companies typically don't always want to work with universities for lots of different reasons. But one way that we thought, what's a great way of getting our research out of this lab and into the real world, and that is by setting up a company and we knew from conversations that we've been having with, you know, sort of university clients as it were, but not really, but companies that were coming to the university and asking for this, that there was a commercial arm for this. So, we knew there was an opportunity, we just didn't know, sort of, how do we do it?
[00:04:22] Hattie Hlad: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:23] Victoria Kroll: How do we do it? So we went to the university themselves and said, oh, what do we do? And they, they came back to us and they said, well, there's lots of different options, of course, and one of them would be, you know, setting up a spin out company. But that's a long way down the path from where you are right now and you know, everyone has to make sure that it's the right option. So at that particular point in time, which was what, about 2019, we were successful enough to get onto an Innovate UK scheme, which was called ICUR. So it stands for Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research and it's basically a scheme where you got like three months to go out and test, you know, your value proposition, not just in like, your particular area, but also you can go and test it in lots of different areas as well. So we looked at, road safety, aviation, even animal care, and a few kind of more strange things. But at the end of that came back to the idea of actually, yeah, we have got a good proposition and that really was the kind of start of the whole company and I don't know if you want me to go into that whole stuff that without asking the next question, but...
[00:05:31] Hattie Hlad: we'll go on to the next question. So I'm sure you've got a lot to tell.
[00:05:35] Victoria Kroll: Oh gosh!
[00:05:35] Hattie Hlad: So for those of us who haven't been involved in research and academia, can you just take the process back to basics for us? I'm interested to know what goes into a research program, how you choose your subject area, who you involve, how you validate and then what is the end result?
[00:05:52] Victoria Kroll: Sure. Now that is a very big question also, and I will try and keep this one briefer. it depends on what your research question is, to be honest with you. So, typically the things that we are involved in are developing online assessments based around hazard perception, or hazard awareness, or hazard prediction as it were, and risk taking skills of drivers. So what we would do if we were going to go sort of back to basics from the start to the beginning is first of all we'd go out and we'd film. So we'd go stick cameras on a vehicle, we'd film a load of footage, and then we'd do a lot of editing with that footage to make it sort of look like it's from the position of the driver with that and we'd sort of use our team of traffic and transport psychologists, that's what we call ourselves to review that footage and go, okay, which is the most promising stimuli that we think based on our experience is going to tap into those particular skills that we're trying to assess. So if it was sort of has a awareness, hazard prediction, we look at the ones that have got the sort of best precursors, so the best clues to the hazard and select those ones as our sort of most promising stimuli and then what we'd go and do is we'd go to validate that and to validate that, what we typically do is, to say that a test is validated, is you would test it on people who are sort of typically novice drivers, because we know that novice drivers are overrepresented in the collision statistics, and we test it on experienced drivers as well, and what we'd hope to find is that our experienced drivers outperform our novice drivers, and in that sense, we can say that the test is tapping into that particular skill, so the test is valid. However, that isn't always the case. Sometimes it doesn't work, first of all, because what you do is you put in a load of clips, you put in more than you possibly need, and what you need to do is take out the ones that don't work, edit them or change them or get rid of them, and then what you really should be doing is retesting again to ensure that that is, you're not just cherry picking through the data.
So you'd retest it again and hopefully at the end of that you go, okay, this test can tap into that particular skill. So yeah, for us it would be novice drivers versus experienced, that's kind of the gold standard, but in reality it's not always that easy. Sometimes you have to use something else such as a collision history as a sort of reference for safe versus less safe drivers.
[00:08:01] Hattie Hlad: That's amazing, thank you. That's clearly a very robust process. So, once you've quantified this research, and you've produced your white paper, how is this then disseminated, and how is the knowledge shared to drive change?
[00:08:16] Victoria Kroll: So in an academic setting, one of the ways that we would do that is going to conferences and events and luckily, David and I often get invited to, you know, sort of industry specific events, both in an academic capacity and as an industry capacity as well and we can share our knowledge, you know, on the stage as it were and also the other big thing particularly, and it's really important for our company in particular, is being able to publish that research in a peer reviewed journal because our USP is that our content is based on that rigorous scientific process and so having those papers to support that kind of process that we've been through is really important to us.
So there is the kind of dissemination of going out and talking, but also the definitely publishing the papers or even, you know, just in magazines or talking to colleagues, talking to other people in the industry. We've got a lot of collaborators who we can kind of share that with as well. So word of mouth as well.
[00:09:11] Hattie Hlad: Absolutely. So we've read through lots of your research papers, such as your hazard perception tool for emergency response, perception of hazards in professional drivers, and cyber sickness symptoms, to name a few. Out of all of the research you have done, which do you feel has had the biggest impact on the sector and why?
[00:09:29] Victoria Kroll: Now, that's a very tricky one to answer. I mean, I don't think I could actually put my finger on kind of one of them in particular. We know that the hazard perception test, the implementation of that within government is obviously not down to my research, but it's down to a lot of research that has been done and that has obviously had a massive impact in reducing collisions and we've taken that a little bit of a step further in terms of professional drivers by developing a hazard prediction test, which we know is a better assessment of professional driver safety. So it's better able for your professional drivers rather than your sort of learner drivers and being able to implement that in the sector has been, has been really good and there has been other companies as well that have been taking sort of our methodology on going forward. I know not necessarily in the sector, but I know sort of from conversations that David's had with the government in the Netherlands, they've taken on our prediction format in their national rollout of their hazard perception test and there is rumor as well that the Irish government are following suit as well with some kind of hybrid test. So hazard perception and hazard prediction. So I guess. The work that we've done in hazard prediction, it probably had the biggest impact, I'd say, but I couldn't pinpoint a specific paper.
[00:10:40] Hattie Hlad: Well, that sounds very impressive. I think no matter what sector you're in, we all have those standout projects. So it's great to hear yours. Now we're gonna head on to the topic of Esitu. I know you've been collaborating with my director on this business function, but for the benefit of our listeners, can you just explain how the concept of a commercial business function linked to your research at the university came about?
[00:11:04] Victoria Kroll: So it came about as, I could say, wanting to get that research into the real world, and we were lucky enough to win an Innovate UK grant, which supported the setup of the company back in 2019, or 2020, sorry. Unfortunately, that was just about when COVID hit.
[00:11:24] Hattie Hlad: Yep.
[00:11:25] Victoria Kroll: So for us, the project was with Innovate UK and luckily we were able to kind of sort of put a bit of a pause on it, which kind of worked quite well because we were finishing off some of our research at the university anyway, we've got projects that we were doing, which we're still able to continue through COVID and then as we sort of came out the other side of COVID. We were able to go, okay, let's get the company up and running, and the real first sort of, you know, 18 months was kind of getting a platform as it were. So, bespoke web application to host our content and provide assessments to the end users and the same with our VR, make sure we've got an app that people could use. So it kind of, excuse the pun, the vehicle to get our content to people was what we were developing and then We really have started to go to market over the last kind of couple of years and obviously making really great collaborations with PDT as well and we're really excited about that project as well.
[00:12:14] Hattie Hlad: We're really excited to be a part of that journey as well. I would say that using this to bring your research to life is pretty innovative. But what would you say is the end goal? What would you like to see Esitu achieve? And what do the milestones look like?
[00:12:29] Victoria Kroll: Yes, this is another really big question. I think for us, obviously I've really touched upon the reasons why we started the company and the main reason is to make an impact in the real world. We want to be able to help reduce collisions, it's quite, you know, a thing that's quite close to our hearts and, you know, tackling the fleet industry, you know, one in three fatal collisions involve someone who is dying... who is driving for work. So it is a big issue there and that's what we want to start to tackle and you know, I think sort of the end goal would be to, you know, be a household name in the fleet industry as it were, but to get to that stage that obviously there is a long way to go yet. We've got a lot of development to do. One of the things that we're working on at the moment is in, you know, making our content as bespoke to lots of different types of vehicles. So one of the things that I haven't really mentioned is that all of our content is tailored to the type of vehicle that it's gonna be used for. So if we are developing something for a HGV driver, it is actually filmed from a HGV.
So this may involve me getting up at five in the morning and sticking a massive 360 camera on a HGV. But equally it could be from a car and it could be from a bus. So one of the things for us is trying to, you know, get that back catalog together and get as many as much content for each of the types of vehicles, you know, within our sort of repertoire and expand from that really, particularly, you know, with the VR side of things as well, I think it's really up and coming and, you know, I think we want to be one of the first people out there to really demonstrate that VR, that the content that we can make an impact for road safety. So again, just growing our sort of VR content as well and you know, working with PDT on that be really important for us as well.
[00:14:04] Hattie Hlad: That sounds incredible. Thank you. We look forward to being part of that journey and seeing how far Esitu can go to embed research based solutions into commercial operations. Now I'm just going to jump on to another important subject, virtual reality. Now at PDT, our claim to fame was being one of the first training businesses to roll out the use of VR as part of road safety into commercial market. So we get it. We understand how effective and immersive experience can be, but can you tell us what your involvement has been in linking VR with road safety and what your research has told us?
[00:14:38] Victoria Kroll: So the, the project that we did that we looked at with, VR was funded by the Road Safety Trust, the RAC foundation, and also the DVSA as well, which is great. A really great project and it was essentially to see whether there was any benefit of using virtual reality hazard assessment over and above traditional sort of, you know, computer based hazard assessment and one of the first studies, which I think you touched upon earlier was about sort of cyber sickness and looking at which methodology made, you know, people more sick, the sort of hazard perception or the hazard prediction version of the test and to be honest, neither was massively worse at making anyone sick. But we went down our route with the prediction one for the rest of the project because it was less than the perception one. But what we did find was in the project kind of overall without going into all of the different studies, that the virtual reality version of the test was as good, if not better than the traditional test at being able to separate safe from less safe drivers and users also found it more realistic, more immersive and more engaging. than the traditional test, which is really great because we know that if people are engaged with things, they're more likely to take on board things from it and take on board learning points. So those were the main outcomes from the project it was a big project.
[00:15:57] Hattie Hlad: I think it's interesting to see what VR experiences of the future will look like. I'm sure we have a lot of ideas in all of our minds, but let's take a minute to get a bit more technical. From what we can establish around your research with hazard perception, and in particular your academic paper, Accident Analysis and Prevention, tells us that since the creation of the Learner Driver Hazard Perception Test, this has had a monumental effect in reducing collisions, you mentioned that earlier. Your paper explains around the subject of hazard perception versus hazard prediction. Can you just explain what the differences are? I know we've touched on it, but can you just explain for us?
[00:16:38] Victoria Kroll: Yeah, sure. So the traditional Hazard Perception Test is from the perspective of a driver. So you're watching it as if you're the driver and what you do is when you see a hazard, you press a button to indicate that you've seen that hazard and that button, if it falls within a predefined window, which has an onset and an offset, you'll score points for and the theory is, and this is based on research, that the faster you press within that window, the safer driver you are, and that's been linked to collision risk. So the faster you respond, the less likely you are in the future to have a collision, but within that window. So that's the perception test and it, and it has worked fantastically, but our version of the test, it's a slight kind of variation of that test, and the main reason for developing that test is because that sometimes when people do the Hazard Perception Test, particularly professional drivers or advanced drivers, so your ADIs, what happens is that they actually press too soon. So they press before that window offset... onset sorry, and they end up scoring fewer points than the learner drivers. So you often get this, Ah, I pressed too soon. So there's that kind of bias around the test and also as well, sometimes they end up pressing a bit late in the window because of what we call criterion bias. So although they may have seen the hazard way before the novice driver, they think, oh, well, it's not that hazardous for me. I'm a professional driver, you know, I can handle it. But it's only as it really starts to develop that they go, oh, okay, actually, yeah, maybe I do need to press now and again, they may be scoring fewer points than the learner drivers, but actually they did see it way before them and this is something we can really see with eye movements, but that's another story, but the prediction test kind of gets around that, so we get around having sort of response time windows, and instead, very, very similar, you're watching it as if you're the driver, watching from the perspective of the driver and as soon as the hazard starts to onset, so you get what we call a precursor, so a clue to the hazard, the screen cuts out, fades to black, and you get asked what happens next and you have to kind of, you're not predicting it because you will have seen it. If you're looking in the right place at the right time, you will know what is about to happen next and you'll get four options on the screen presented to you and you pick the one that you think is correct based on what you've seen. So with that, you're also getting a measure of accuracy because you know whether they've got it right or wrong, there's only one answer, only one thing is going to actually happen next and that's another thing with the perception test, is you don't necessarily know what they're pressing for, because they could be pressing in that window, but actually, what are they pressing for? So, yeah, that's the kind of, the difference between the tests. One is a response time, one is a multiple choice question. But what we typically find is with professional drivers, the prediction test is better able to discriminate between your safe and less safe drivers because you're getting rid of that button response, essentially.
[00:19:22] Hattie Hlad: That sounds amazing. Vicky, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you. I feel like we've only scratched the surface of the knowledge you have. I just want to ask you before we finish up today, if you could impart to us three interesting facts about road safety that you think the average person might not know.
[00:19:39] Victoria Kroll: Okay, let me, let me have a think. So I think for me, one of the most, I think, impressive, but I say impressive in not a good way, in a devastating way is, you know, every year 1. 3 million people die on the roads in a road traffic collision, essentially and I think for me, that's one of the things that people don't necessarily, understand is kind of the impact of that, of the issue and aside from that as well, I think it's a fact number two, is that, you know, it is the most common killer of people between the ages 15 and 29. So, road traffic collisions, so that's two of my facts. The other one, I think that the introduction of the hazard perception test saves nearly 90 million pounds every single year to the UK economy.
[00:20:19] Hattie Hlad: Wow, that's amazing.
[00:20:21] Victoria Kroll: So I think those are my three facts.
[00:20:22] Hattie Hlad: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:20:25] Victoria Kroll: You are welcome, thank you for having me!
[00:20:26] Hattie Hlad: That was really great, and I think the best thing we've learnt today is how the two great minds of Dr. Vicky Kroll and Professor David Crundell have not only dedicated themselves to research, but also finding a way to make their research come to life and available to the commercial sector. One episode would never be enough to unpack their knowledge and expertise, so to find out more, head to esitusolutions.com
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Driven by Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review or share this episode with a colleague. For more information and to keep up to date with industry news, head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk