Editorial

Abstract

This volume of TOTS deals with three areas. Two of them, traffic and transport safety, and mobility preconditions for people with special needs, are of continuous interest. The third one, the effects of COVID on transport and mobility, came up as a short-term issue only a couple of years ago. It will lose interest, unless another pandemic will haunt us in the near future; then what we have learned this time will hopefully be useful. Concerning traffic safety, Bicaksiz et al. analyse the relationship between positive personality traits - the Light Triad framework represented by humanism, faith in humanity, and Kantianism - and a safe driving style. Ordinary violations, aggressive violations, and positive driver behaviour subscales of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire DBQ were used to describe the driving style. The Driving Anger Expression Inventory (DAX) was applied to assess aggressive and constructive forms of driving anger expression. After controlling for age, gender, and total mileage, the findings supported the expected associations; some traits of the Light Triad yielded negative associations with aggressive expressions of driving anger, whereas the opposite pattern was found with positive driver behaviour and constructive expression of driving anger. While this paper focussed on safe driving, Chebariachko et al. were interested in improving the safety of passenger road transportation. To this end, they aimed at developing a model of the transport process with minimal risks of incidents by using the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) in order to determine the factors that may influence the reliability of transportation. The specialists' professional experience (the transportation organization manager, the mechanic checking a passenger bus before starting work, doctor, driver), significantly affects the safety of the transportation process. However, the main reason for violation of traffic rules by drivers of passenger buses is the psycho-physiological state of the driver, which is strongly affected by the preconditions generated by the other specialists. Thus, the state of the driver needs to be continuous subject of control, but so do the abilities and activities of the other specialists. The originality of the research lies in the established relationship between functions and criteria that have an impact on the safety of the transport process. Its practical significance lies in the recommendations for monitoring all activities along and around the transportation process, including the psycho-physiological state of the driver. Changing the topic, we move on to persons with special needs. Forsblad et al. analysed how children with mild Intellectual disability experience self-driving buses. The degree of inclusiveness of the design strategy and the role of support persons are analysed. Based on this, recommendations of how to mitigate existing problems in these areas are formulated. The outcomes of the study were, among others, practical hints like that the buses need to decelerate less abruptly and have easier and consistently designed seatbelts. Moreover, the children need to understand more clearly what the bus does, what the system "sees" and reacts to. Support persons can be helpful in this respect. Though within a very d