Dr Rich C McIlroy BSc(Hons), MSc, EngD
Research Fellow in Global Road Safety
Dr Rich McIlroy is a Research Fellow in Global Road Safety within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
Tackling poor road safety records in low and middle incomes countries presents some major challenges; can a socio-technical systems approach help?
He received the BSc (Hons) degree in Psychology and the MSc degree in Research Methods in Psychology from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2008 and 2009 respectively. He was awarded his Engineering Doctorate by the same University in 2016, having been based in the Transportation Research Group, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment. He has published over 16 articles, across a variety of topics, including eco-driving and the effect of in-vehicle information on driving behaviour and fuel use, the effect of multi-sensory information on responding, the general utility of Ecological Interface Design, the link between expertise development and verbal reporting, the use of non-intrusive verbal reporting for information acquisition, and the ability of Cognitive Work Analysis, and its various components, to support decision making and system design in a variety of domains, from rail transport to system requirements specification.
His current research focuses on road safety in low and middle income countries, with the overall goal of the Global Health Research Group in which he is placed being to reduce the number and severity of road accidents that occur. According to World Health Organisation statistics, low and middle income countries see twice the number of road fatalities compared to high income countries, despite the fact that only around half of the world’s registered vehicles can be found on their roads. His main research question asks therefore; how can contemporary, sociotechnical, human factors methods provide us with new ways of addressing the issue, not only in helping to develop safer systems (thereby reducing accident rates), but in reducing injury severity by supporting improved multi-agency emergency response efforts?