Age, skill, and hazard perception in driving

This study examined the effects of age and driving experience on the ability to detect hazards while driving; namely, hazard perception. Studies have shown that young-inexperienced drivers are more likely than experienced drivers to suffer from hazard perception deficiencies. However, it remains to be determined if this skill deteriorates with advancing age. Twenty-one young-inexperienced, 19 experienced, and 16 elderly drivers viewed six hazard perception movies while connected to an eye tracking system and were requested to identify hazardous situations. Four movies embedded planned, highly hazardous, situations and the rest were used as control. Generally, experienced and older-experienced drivers were equally proficient at hazard detection and detected potentially hazardous events (e.g., approaching an intersection, pedestrians on curb) continuously whereas young-inexperienced drivers stopped reporting on hazards that followed planned, highly hazardous situations. Moreover, while approaching T intersections older and experienced drivers fixated more towards the merging road on the right while young-inexperienced drivers fixated straight ahead, paying less attention to potential vehicles on the merging road. The study suggests that driving experience improves drivers’ awareness of potential hazards and guides drivers’ eye movements to locations that might embed potential risks. Furthermore, advanced age hardly affects older drivers’ ability to perceive hazards, and older drivers are at least partially aware of their age-related limitations.     

The visual search patterns and hazard responses of experienced and inexperienced motorcycle riders

Hazard perception is a critical skill for road users. In this study, an open-loop motorcycle simulator was used to examine the effects of motorcycle riding and car driving experience on hazard perception and visual scanning patterns. Three groups of participants were tested: experienced motorcycle riders who were experienced drivers (EM-ED), inexperienced riders/experienced drivers (IM-ED), and inexperienced riders/inexperienced drivers (IM-ID). Participants were asked to search for hazards in simulated scenarios, and click a response button when a hazard was identified. The results revealed a significant monotonic decrease in hazard response times as experience increased from IM-ID to IM-ED to EM-ED. Compared to the IM-ID group, both the EM-ED and IM-ED groups exhibited more flexible visual scanning patterns that were sensitive to the presence of hazards. These results point to the potential benefit of training hazard perception and visual scanning in motorcycle riders, as has been successfully demonstrated in previous studies with car drivers.     

Drivers' perception of vulnerable road users: a hazard perception approach

The present study examined how experienced and young-inexperienced drivers (either trained in hazard perception or not) respond to and identify pedestrians when they appear in residential roads within populated neighborhoods and in urban roads located outside neighborhoods and usually less populated. As part of a hazard perception test, participants were connected to an eye tracking system and were asked to observe 58 traffic scene movies and press a response button each time they detected a hazardous situation. Analyzing all pedestrian-related events revealed that, regardless of driving experience or training, drivers detect pedestrians less often when they appear in urban areas and more often when they appear in residential areas. Moreover, experienced drivers processed information more efficiently than young-inexperienced drivers (both trained and untrained) when pedestrians were identified. Visual search patterns in urban and residential traffic environments are discussed.     

Hazard perception in novice and experienced drivers: The effects of sleepiness

One driver skill that has been found to correlate with crash risk is hazard perception ability. The purpose of this study was to investigate how hazard perception latencies change between high and low sleepiness for a high risk group (novice drivers) and a lower risk group (experienced drivers). Thirty-two novice drivers (aged 17-24 years) and 30 experienced drivers (aged 28-36) completed a validated video-based hazard perception test, in which participants were asked to anticipate genuine traffic conflicts in footage filmed from the driver's perspective, with separate groups tested at either 10 a.m. (lower sleepiness) or at 3 a.m. (higher sleepiness). We found a significant interaction between sleepiness and experience, indicating that the hazard perception skills of the more experienced drivers were relatively unaffected by mild increases in sleepiness while the inexperienced drivers were significantly slowed. The findings suggest that the disproportionate sleepiness-related accident involvement of young, inexperienced drivers could be partly due to a slowing of their ability to anticipate traffic hazards.     

Commentary training improves responsiveness to hazards in a driving simulator

Can commentary driving produce safer drivers? Producing a verbal commentary of potential hazards during driving has long been considered by the police to improve hazard perception skills. In this study we investigated whether learner drivers would benefit from being trained to produce a commentary drive. All learners were initially assessed on a virtual route in a driving simulator that contained 9 hazards. One group of drivers was then trained in commentary driving, and their subsequent simulated driving behaviour was compared to a control group. The results showed that the trained group had fewer crashes, reduced their speed sooner on approach to hazards, and applied pressure to the brakes sooner than untrained drivers. Conversely the untrained drivers’ behaviour on approach to hazards was symptomatic of being surprised at the appearance of the hazards. The benefit of training was found to be greater for certain types of hazard than others.     

Video-based road commentary training improves hazard perception of young drivers in a dual task

This study used a video-based hazard perception dual task to compare the hazard perception skills of young drivers with middle aged, more experienced drivers and to determine if these skills can be improved with video-based road commentary training. The primary task required the participants to detect and verbally identify immediate hazard on video-based traffic scenarios while concurrently performing a secondary tracking task, simulating the steering of real driving. The results showed that the young drivers perceived fewer immediate hazards (mean = 75.2%, n = 24, 19 females) than the more experienced drivers (mean = 87.5%, n = 8, all females), and had longer hazard perception times, but performed better in the secondary tracking task. After the road commentary training, the mean percentage of hazards detected and identified by the young drivers improved to the level of the experienced drivers and was significantly higher than that of an age and driving experience matched control group. The results will be discussed in the context of psychological theories of hazard perception and in relation to road commentary as an evidence-based training intervention that seems to improve many aspects of unsafe driving behaviour in young drivers.     

Augmented reality cues to assist older drivers with gap estimation for left-turns

The objective of this study was to assess the effects of augmented reality (AR) cues designed to assist middle-aged and older drivers with a range of UFOV impairments, judging when to make left-turns across oncoming traffic. Previous studies have shown that AR cues can help middle-aged and older drivers respond to potential roadside hazards by increasing hazard detection without interfering with other driving tasks. Intersections pose a critical challenge for cognitively impaired drivers, prone to misjudge time-to-contact with oncoming traffic. We investigated whether AR cues improve or interfere with hazard perception in left-turns across oncoming traffic for drivers with age-related cognitive decline. Sixty-four middle-aged and older drivers with a range of UFOV impairment judged when it would be safe to turn left across oncoming traffic approaching the driver from the opposite direction in a rural stop-sign controlled intersection scenario implemented in a static base driving simulator. Outcome measures used to evaluate the effectiveness of AR cueing included: Time-to-Contact (TTC), Gap Time Variation (GTV), Response Rate, and Gap Response Variation (GRV). All drivers estimated TTCs were shorter in cued than in uncued conditions. In addition, drivers responded more often in cued conditions than in uncued conditions and GRV decreased for all drivers in scenarios that contained AR cues. For both TTC and response rate, drivers also appeared to adjust their behavior to be consistent with the cues, especially drivers with the poorest UFOV scores (matching their behavior to be close to middle-aged drivers). Driver ratings indicated that cueing was not considered to be distracting. Further, various conditions of reliability (e.g., 15% miss rate) did not appear to affect performance or driver ratings.     

Young drivers' optimism bias for accident risk and driving skill: Accountability and insight experience manipulations

This study aimed to determine whether two brief, low cost interventions would reduce young drivers’ optimism bias for their driving skills and accident risk perceptions. This tendency for such drivers to perceive themselves as more skilful and less prone to driving accidents than their peers may lead to less engagement in precautionary driving behaviours and a greater engagement in more dangerous driving behaviour. 243 young drivers (aged 17–25 years) were randomly allocated to one of three groups: accountability, insight or control. All participants provided both overall and specific situation ratings of their driving skills and accident risk relative to a typical young driver. Prior to completing the questionnaire, those in the accountability condition were first advised that their driving skills and accident risk would be later assessed via a driving simulator. Those in the insight condition first underwent a difficult computer-based hazard perception task designed to provide participants with insight into their potential limitations when responding to hazards in difficult and unpredictable driving situations. Participants in the control condition completed only the questionnaire. Results showed that the accountability manipulation was effective in reducing optimism bias in terms of participants’ comparative ratings of their accident risk in specific situations, though only for less experienced drivers. In contrast, among more experienced males, participants in the insight condition showed greater optimism bias for overall accident risk than their counterparts in the accountability or control groups. There were no effects of the manipulations on drivers’ skills ratings. The differential effects of the two types of manipulations on optimism bias relating to one's accident risk in different subgroups of the young driver sample highlight the importance of targeting interventions for different levels of experience. Accountability interventions may be beneficial for less experienced young drivers but the results suggest exercising caution with the use of insight type interventions, particularly hazard perception style tasks, for more experienced young drivers typically still in the provisional stage of graduated licensing systems.     

Some hazards are more attractive than others: Drivers of varying experience respond differently to different types of hazard

The ability to detect hazards in video clips of driving has been inconsistently linked to driving experience and skill. One potential reason for the lack of consistency is the failure to understand the structural differences between those hazards that discriminate between safe and unsafe drivers, and those that do not. The current study used a car simulator to test drivers of differing levels of experience on approach to a series of hazards that were categorized a priori according to their underlying structure. The results showed that learner drivers took longer to fixate hazards, although they were particularly likely to miss hazards that were obscured by the environment (such as a pedestrian emerging from behind a parked truck). While drivers with a moderate amount of experience were as fast as driving instructors to look at hazards, they spent the greatest amount of time looking at them. Only instructors’ ability to detect hazards early in the approach translated into differences in driving speed for certain types of hazard. The results demonstrate that drivers of varying experience respond differently to different hazards, and lay the foundations for a hazard typology.     

Even highly experienced drivers benefit from a brief hazard perception training intervention

We examined the proposal that hazard perception ability is suboptimal even in highly experienced mid-age drivers. First, we replicated previous findings in which police drivers significantly outperformed highly experienced drivers on a validated video-based hazard perception test, indicating that the ability of the experienced participants had not reached ceiling despite decades of driving. Second, we found that the highly experienced drivers’ hazard perception test performance could be improved with a mere 20 min of video-based training, and this improvement remained evident after a delay of at least a week. One possible explanation as to why hazard perception skill may be suboptimal even in experienced drivers is a dearth of self-insight, potentially resulting in a lack of motivation to improve this ability. Consistent with this proposal, we found no significant relationships between self-ratings and objective measures of hazard perception ability in this group. We also found significant self-enhancement biases in the self-ratings and that participants who received training did not rate their performance (either in real driving or in the test) as having improved, contrary to what was indicated by their objective performance data.     

Estimating hazards in traffic situations

Hazards are attributes of road traffic. Safe driving requires perception of hazards and their combination into an overall evaluation of hazardousness of traffic situations. This process has been called hazard cognition. Results of previous studies could not show how drivers come to those cognitions. Because of the number of factors which contribute to these cognitions hazardousness can be seen as a multidimensional attribute of traffic situations. Drivers must recognize the dimensions of this attribute. To find out if drivers can do this, two experiments were conducted. In both experiments methods of multidimensional scaling were applied to pictorial representations of traffic situations. In Experiment I subjects comparing 16 situations with respect to hazardousness estimated more or less the magnitude of hazardousness. Results from indirect similarity ratings of 38 situations in Experiment II demonstrated a strong influence of driving experience. Less experienced drivers (75,000 km on average) stick more closely to details of situations and judge types of hazardousness, whereas more experienced drivers (150,000 km on average) judge hazardousness in a more holistic manner, obviously integrating different aspects of traffic situations. However, a common characteristic of all situations estimated as to be hazardous was a fairly high load of information on the driver. This certainly does not mean an equivalence of information load and hazardousness but results of these studies demonstrated the loading character of hazard control.     

Hazard prediction discriminates between novice and experienced drivers

Typical hazard perception tests often confound multiple processes in their responses. The current study tested hazard prediction in isolation to assess whether this component can discriminate between novice and experienced drivers. A variant of the hazard perception test, based on the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique, found experienced drivers to outperform novices across three experiments suggesting that the act of predicting an imminent hazard is a crucial part of the hazard-perception process. Furthermore three additional hypotheses were tested in these experiments. First, performance was compared across clips of different length. There was marginal evidence that novice drivers’ performance suffered with the longest clips, but experienced drivers’ performance did not, suggesting that experienced drivers find hazard prediction less effortful. Secondly, predictive accuracy was found to be dependent on the temporal proximity of visual precursors to the hazard. Thirdly the relationship between the hazard and its precursor was found to be important, with less obvious precursors improving the discrimination between novice and experience drivers. These findings demonstrate that a measure of hazard prediction, which is less confounded by the influence of risk appraisal than simple response time measures, can still discriminate between novice and experienced drivers. Application of this methodology under different conditions can produce insights into the underlying processes that may be at work, whilst also providing an alternative test of driver skill in relation to the detection of hazards.     

Enhancing hazard avoidance in teen-novice riders

Research suggests that novice drivers’ safety performance is inferior to that of experienced drivers in different ways. One of the most critical skills related to accident avoidance by a novice driver is the detection, recognition and reaction to traffic hazards; it is called hazard perception and is defined as the ability to identify potentially dangerous traffic situations. The focus of this research is to assess how far a motorcycle simulator could improve hazard avoidance skills in teenagers. Four hundred and ten participants (207 in the experimental group and 203 in the control group) took part in this research. Results demonstrated that the mean proportion of avoided hazards increases as a function of the number of tracks performed in the virtual training. Participants of the experimental group after the training had a better proportion of avoided hazards than participants of the control group with a passive training based on a road safety lesson. Results provide good evidence that training with the simulator increases the number of avoided accidents in the virtual environment. It would be reasonable to explain this improvement by a higher level of hazard perception skills.     

Effects of driver age and experience in abrupt-onset hazards

Novice drivers and older drivers are found to have the highest crash risk among all drivers and this has motivated many research studies into various aspects of novice and older drivers. Although age-related declines were expected, studies did not find older drivers to respond slower to hazards. This study examined the hazard detection and response latencies of 14 young novice drivers, 14 young experienced drivers, and 12 older experienced drivers, to abrupt-onset hazards. Older drivers were found to take longer times before fixating on an abrupt-onset road hazard but appeared to have insignificantly faster reaction times after the initial fixation. Hence, the overall response latency did not suggest any age effects. Older drivers also scanned the roadway less as compared to their younger counterparts. No effects of experience were found. The findings provided insight on age-related declines in hazard detection whose effects have been masked by other components of hazard response.     

Driving in fog: The effects of driving experience and visibility on speed compensation and hazard avoidance

Inexperience is one of the strongest predictors for collisions, but it remains unclear how novice drivers differ from experienced drivers in terms of safety-related behavioural adaptations such as speed reduction in the presence of reduced visibility. To investigate the influence of driving experience on behavioural compensations to fog, average speed, speed variability, steering variability, collision rate, and hazard response time were measured in a driving simulator. Experienced drivers drove faster in clear visibility than novice drivers, yet they reduced their speed more in reduced visibility so that both groups drove at the same speed in simulated fog. Compared to experienced drivers, novice drivers had higher hazard response times, greater speed and steering variability, and were the only drivers to have collisions.     

Do mental workload and presence experienced when driving a real car predispose drivers to simulator sickness? An exploratory study

This study is aimed at determining whether the simulator sickness (SS) experienced by some drivers is influenced by psychological factors, such as cognitive solicitation, affective factors and a feeling of presence. We also wished to determine whether SS is caused by an individual reaction to the virtual environment (VE) itself or can be attributed to a more general personal predisposition. For this reason, we considered three conditions: driving a simulator, driving one’s own vehicle and driving a school-owned vehicle. Fourteen expert drivers participated in the study. Each drove under a different experimental condition and then responded to various questionnaires (SSQ, NASA-TLX and QPF). Our results showed that it is possible to identify at least three sources of explanation of why some people are more liable to feel sick in a driving simulator.     

Effect of exposure to aggressive stimuli on aggressive driving behavior at pedestrian crossings at unmarked roadways

BackgroundAggressive driving, influenced by the proneness of driving aggression, angry state and provoking situation, is adversely affecting traffic safety especially in developing countries where pedestrians frequently cross an unmarked crosswalk. Exposure to aggressive stimuli causes driving anger and aggressive driving behaviors, but the exposure effect on higher and lower aggression drivers and their cumulative changes under successive exposures need more investigation.ObjectivesAn experiment was conducted to examine (1) driving behaviors of individuals with higher and lower aggressive driving traits when approaching pedestrian crossings at unmarked roadways with and without aggressive provocation; and (2) cumulative changes of driving performance under repeated provocations.MethodWe conducted a driving simulator study with 50 participants. Trait of aggressive driving served as a between-subjects variable: participants with an Aggressive Driving Scale (ADS) total score of 30 or more (for men) or 23 or more (for women) were regarded as higher aggressive drivers; lower aggressive drivers were those individuals whose ADS total scores were 21 or less (for men) or 13 or less (for women). Exposure to aggressive stimuli (provoked vs. non-provoked condition) served as a within-subjects variable. Several aspects of the participants’ minimum driving speed, lateral distance from a simulated pedestrian, lateral deviation, and subjective measures were collected.ResultsWe found that drivers with higher aggressive driving traits were more likely to feel irritated and fail to give way for pedestrians and drove closer to pedestrians when exposed to sustained honking and improper passing compared to the non-provoked condition. This trait × state interaction only occurred when pedestrians crossed the street from the right roadway edge line. In addition, we observed an accumulation effect of exposure to aggressive stimuli on driver's aggressive behaviors at pedestrian crossings.ConclusionsEnvironmental design, law enforcement, and educational campaign may have practical value for reducing pedestrian and driver conflicts at unmarked roadways.     

Route familiarity breeds inattention: A driving simulator study

Inattention is a major cause of traffic accidents. Here, we show that, contrary to common-sense expectation, familiarity with a route is itself a source of driving impairment. This effect may be attributed to increased mind-wandering along familiar routes. In the present work, participants followed a vehicle along a route with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar. During the experimental session, the lead-vehicle braked at random locations, forcing participants to brake to avoid a collision. Participants were also required to respond with a button press when they noticed pedestrians heading toward the road from a sidewalk. In Experiment 1 we found that familiar drivers follow the lead vehicle more closely and are slower to notice approaching pedestrians. In Experiment 2, with following distance held constant, reaction times to central and peripheral events were longer for familiar drivers. Consistent with the mind-wandering hypothesis, all these effects were eliminated in Experiment 3 when drivers were made to focus on the driving task.     

A behavioral comparison between motorcyclists and a matched group of non-motorcycling car drivers: factors influencing accident risk

Motorcyclists and a matched group of non-motorcycling car drivers were assessed on behavioral measures known to relate to accident involvement. Using a range of laboratory measures, we found that motorcyclists chose faster speeds than the car drivers, overtook more, and pulled into smaller gaps in traffic, though they did not travel any closer to the vehicle in front. The speed and following distance findings were replicated by two further studies involving unobtrusive roadside observation. We suggest that the increased risk-taking behavior of motorcyclists was only likely to account for a small proportion of the difference in accident risk between motorcyclists and car drivers. A second group of motorcyclists was asked to complete the simulator tests as if driving a car. They did not differ from the non-motorcycling car drivers on the risk-taking measures but were better at hazard perception. There were also no differences for sensation seeking, mild social deviance, and attitudes to riding/driving, indicating that the risk-taking tendencies of motorcyclists did not transfer beyond motorcycling, while their hazard perception skill did.     

Merging into heavy motorway traffic by young and elderly drivers

An increase in the number of Heavy Goods Vehicles on motorways may lead to additional problems in the interaction with an increased number of elderly drivers. Elderly drivers suffer from reduced information processing speed and capacity, and in general effectively compensate for this by taking more time. However, this strategy, regulating task demands by slowing down will make merging into motorway traffic actually more difficult.In an experiment performed in a driving simulator, young and elderly drivers merged into motorway traffic. Driver behaviour and mental workload were studied while the following factors were manipulated: type of traffic and density of Heavy Goods Vehicles on the main road, the length of the acceleration lane, presence of a slowly driving lead car, and presence of a driver support system that encouraged the drivers to speed up if their speed was too low.Results show that the effects of an increased number of Heavy Goods Vehicles on the main road were not more adverse for elderly than for the young participants, with the exception that elderly drivers merged at a lower speed. This lower speed could make the manoeuvre more risky in real traffic. The support system and an extended acceleration lane facilitated merging, while a slowly driving lead car impeded completion of the manoeuvre.