Dr Fiona Fylan is a health psychologist who specialises in understanding the decisions that people make that affect their health and wellbeing, and how to help people make more appropriate or less risky decisions.
Fiona’s research addresses a wide range of health-related behaviours and focuses on road user behaviour.
Her research explores why people drive and ride the way they do, the way in which they think about driving and riding, and how to change the decisions they on the roads in order to increase safe and responsible road user behaviour. She also explores transport decisions and interactions between different road user groups, such as cyclists and drivers.
Fiona is the academic lead on the NDORS course development unit and has led evaluations of local and national driver offender schemes including RIDE, the National Driver Improvement Scheme and the National Speed Awareness Course.
Fiona has also undertaken major pieces of policy work for the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, and Her Majesty’s Prison Service.
Workshop: What is impulsivity and why do you need to know about it?
There is growing evidence of the role of impulsivity in risky driver behaviour, and how interventions for drivers and pre-drivers can give people greater insight into their own impulsivity and how to manage it. Fiona has been working with Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue to develop a resource that teachers can use with young people to help them understand why impulsivity can mean they do things they would normally know are not a great idea.
In this Fringe workshop, Fiona will explain what impulsivity is, how it can affect behaviour, how you can measure it and therefore evaluate interventions to address it.