Preventing Struck-by Hazards: Defying Risk-habituation via Virtual Accident Simulation

Repeated exposure to struck-by hazards in road work zones generates workers’ habituation to risks related to those hazards, a key contributor to accidents in road work zones. Thus, analyzing the development of risk habituation and providing proper intervention are crucial to preventing accidents in road work zones. In this context, this study employs a virtual reality (VR) environment as a behavioral intervention tool to investigate its effect on mitigating a decline in workers’ vigilance with habituation to hazards in workplaces. A virtual environment that simulates a road maintenance task was developed and used to repeatedly expose subjects to struck-by hazards in road construction sites. A VR accident was simulated in response to the emergence of habituation to hazards within the virtual environment. The intervention effect was investigated to analyze the frequency and threshold of subjects’ vigilant behaviors. The results indicated that the developed VR environment evoked a decline in subjects’ attentiveness as a result of risk habituation within a relatively short period of experiment time, and the simulated VR accidents generated a sustained effect in reducing risk habituation. The findings of this study provide the understanding of how workers’ risk habituation can be observed using VR and how a behavioral intervention in a VR environment can reduce risk habituation to repeatedly exposed workplace hazards.

道路作业区域反复接触被撞击危险源，会使作业人员对这类危险源相关风险产生习惯化，而这正是道路作业区域事故的关键诱因。因此，分析风险习惯化的发展过程并采取恰当干预措施，对防范道路作业区域事故至关重要。在此背景下，本研究采用虚拟现实（Virtual Reality，VR）环境作为行为干预工具，探究其对缓解作业人员因危险源习惯化导致的警觉性下降的效果。本研究开发了一套模拟道路养护作业的虚拟环境，用于让受试对象反复暴露于道路施工现场的被撞击危险源中。针对虚拟环境中出现的危险源习惯化情况，我们模拟了一起VR事故场景。通过分析受试对象警觉行为的发生频率与阈值，对干预效果进行评估。研究结果显示，所开发的VR环境可在较短的实验周期内，因风险习惯化导致受试对象的注意力水平下降；而模拟VR事故则能持续发挥降低风险习惯化的作用。本研究的发现有助于理解如何通过VR观测作业人员的风险习惯化，以及如何在VR环境中实施行为干预，以降低反复接触职场危险源所带来的风险习惯化。