International Journal of Social Science Tomorrow Vol. 1 No. 9 ISSN: 2277-6168 November|2012 www.ijsst.com Page | 1 A Study of Human and Envioronmental Factors as a Measure to Increase Safe Driving Abilities Neelima Chakrabarty, Reetesh Riku, Abstract The present day traffic environment which is grappled with growing traffic which is contributing to complexity in traffic movement and speed variations, the ability to judge and respond to the peripheral stimuli is one of the best means to a safe and defensive driving. Peripheral vision or side vision is the ability to see static and moving objects from the corner of one’s’ eyes. The peripheral stimuli are often uncertain and capricious. A good driver quickly spots the stimuli, filters out relevant stimuli, recognize these and can react spontaneously according to their level of importance. The primary aim of this paper is to understand the importance of peripheral vision as one of the important sensorimotor traits so as to avoid near accident situations and crash conflicts and thus enhance traffic safety. Therefore, a comparative study has been conducted to investigate peripheral visual performance of three different groups targeting the drivers of heavy commercial vehicles which included specially trained drivers for high risk conditions with excellent driving records, drivers with normally good driving records under normal driving conditions and drivers who have met with couple of accident situations while driving. These experimental studies have revealed that the peripheral detection of the stimuli, judgment, filtering process and reactions towards these stimuli was found to be lowest among heavy vehicle commercial drivers with previous accident records as compared to other groups. Further, it is inferred from this study that there is a positive correlation between low or impaired peripheral vision and high risk factor based on the drivers subjected to experimentation. Keywords: Peripheral Vision; Sensorimotor; High Risk Factor