Dutch Traffic Researcher Collaborates with UMTRI

Posted 07/14/2008
Divera Twisk, a Dutch researcher in novice drivers, accident patterns, learning processes, and human factors approaches, is working at UMTRI this summer as a visiting research scholar.

Twisk comes to UMTRI from SWOV, the Institute for Road Safety Research in Leidschendam, the Netherlands, where she is the program director for human behavior research. Like UMTRI, SWOV is an interdisciplinary research institute that aims to promote road safety through scientific research. Its research areas include road casualties, mobility, risk, sustainable safety, road safety policy, modes of transport, and high-risk groups and behaviors.

Twisk is pursuing a Ph.D. in social sciences at Maastricht University. Her research focus is behavior, learning processes, education, and the young. She is studying adolescents and risk taking, especially educating youth about the risk of traffic and evaluating and improving the effectiveness of those education programs. At UMTRI, she is working with Jean Shope, a leading researcher on young drivers, who is also the cochair of Twisk's dissertation committee.

Twisk serves as a national advisor for regional traffic safety councils throughout the Netherlands. She is also an international advisor who consults with the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) in Australia and the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) in Germany. She serves on an advisory group to the Dutch Minister of Transport on licensing requirements for drivers with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Twisk chairs the working group Young Driver Tasks and Effective Countermeasures for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. She is also the chair of the Editorial Committee of the European Road Safety Observatory, an online data resource. She was chair of a working committee to publish the book Young Drivers: The Road to Safety, of which Shope was a reviewer.

Prior to joining SWOV, Twisk worked briefly for TNO, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. She studied the effects of organic solvents on brain function in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University.

Twisk earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology from Keele University in England and a master's degree in experimental psychology and human factors from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.