German, 12 pages, 12 figures
Keywords: eye movement, information perception, reaction

Road traffic accidents happen due to a malfunction of at least one of the factors man, vehicle, and road. The majority of accidents, however, is caused by human errors and man's difficulties handling information input. The reconstruction of this type of accidents has always been inadequate up to now. Perturbed perception respectively the deficient recognition of a situation are central aspects of accidents. Thus, the focus of analyses has to be mainly on human errors in handling information input. Human information processing is generally determined by the driver's destination, his/her physical condition and his/her mental preconditions such as motivation, level of activation, stress, experience, the willingness to take risks etc. The Ludwig Boltzmann institute for accident research is carrying out detailed analyses of road users' perception and information processing and correlates them with the traffic flow. Human accident causes, information overflow and distractions can be measured and analysed precisely with the help of the modern viewpointsystem® – which measures the movement of the human eye –, the analysis of relevant vehicle data from the crash recorder, and by measuring the of test person's physiological characteristics with a physio-recorder.