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U can’t touch this! Face touching behaviour whilst driving: implications for health, hygiene and human factors

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posted on 2022-07-01, 14:28 authored by Finian Ralph, David Large, Gary Burnett, Alexandra Lang, Andrew MorrisAndrew Morris
Analysis of thirty-one hours of video-data documenting 36 experienced drivers highlighted the prevalence of face-touching, with 819 contacts identified (mean frequency: 26.4 face touches/hour (FT/h); mean duration: 3.9-seconds). Fewer face-touches occurred in high primary workload conditions (where additional physical/cognitive demands were placed on drivers), compared to low workload (4.4 and 26.1 FT/h, respectively). In 42.5% of touches (or 11.2 FT/h), mucous membrane contact was made, with fingertips (33.1%) and thumbs (35.6%) most commonly employed. Individual behaviours differed (ranging from 5.1 to 90.7 FT/h), but there were no significant differences identified between genders, age-groups or hand used. Results are of relevance from an epidemiological/hygiene perspective within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (and can therefore inform the design of practical solutions and encourage behavioural change to reduce the risk of self-inoculation while driving), but they also help to elucidate how habitual human behaviours are imbricated with the routine accomplishment of tasks.

History

School

  • Design and Creative Arts

Department

  • Design

Published in

Ergonomics

Volume

65

Issue

7

Pages

943 - 959

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor & Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2021-11-04

Publication date

2021-11-22

Copyright date

2021

ISSN

0014-0139

eISSN

1366-5847

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Andrew Morris. Deposit date: 5 November 2021

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