Splinter Cell Researchers: Collision of Video Games and Real Life

How often does a job come around where you get to live out a video game experience? Not often. Which is why I had to accept an offer as a research assistant for the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute where we would be using Night Vision Goggles and PDA’s to collect traffic survey data in the middle of the night. When the field supervisor first described this position it sounded eerily similar to the game Splinter Cell, where the main character, garbed in all black, NVG’s and often uses a PDA, sneaks around in the dark.

One area of this study that, a little too closely, mirrored Splinter Cell was the amount of gunplay that we encountered on the road (see previous posts entitled Crazies, Cops and Gunshots and It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp). Since this study was state-wide, we were required to visit some pretty dangerous areas of the larger cities in order to get statistically accurate sampling. Never would I have imagined that I’d see more action as a research assistant for U of M than during the first Gulf War serving in the Army.

Beyond the game similarities, something that really appealed to me was just the sheer amount of tech that we ended up using in this job compared to most; laptops, cell phones, GPS, digital stopwatches, MP3 players (ipod Shuffle, Creative Zen Nano), WIFI boosters, portable TV band tuners, digital cameras, Treo 650 PDA’s using HanDBase, Infrared spotlights, and of course the very sexy military ANPVS-7B Night Vision Goggles (chicks totally dig night vision) – the exact model that I used back in my Army days as a sniper. Though, I’m sad to admit that the goggles don’t make that cool sound you often hear in movies and the game when turned on.

The purpose of this study was to look at nighttime seatbelt use of motorists in the state of Indiana using two waves of data collection surrounding the Memorial Day holiday. I’m sure everyone has seen or heard of those “Click it or Ticket” campaigns, well this research is basically to see how effective those commercials are, as well as general seatbelt use statistics. We concluded the first wave a few weeks before Memorial Day, and we are now finishing up the second wave of data collection.

The use of PDA’s is a pretty revolutionary step forward in data collection methodologies as compared to the tried and true, yet outdated paper and pencil approach. While a lot of this technology has been around for years, often it takes much coercion and forethought in order to convince academia to incorporate new tech. We were able to reliably increase the number of records collected by a good deal, as well as save time transferring the data into Access for later statistical analysis.

Another area where we were cutting-edge was with the use of the NVG’s. This was the first state-wide nighttime study of seat belt use utilizing night vision and infrared in the United States, though I’m sure this study will pave the way for future direct observation nighttime research. Since Indiana is pretty lax on their window tinting enforcement, we found using the goggles was the only way to determine seatbelt use even on well lit roadways. Not to mention that it's extremely cool for star gazing when there's a lull in the action. For anyone interested in learning more check out the Social and Behavioral Analysis Department at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute: http://www.umtri.umich.edu/index.html