Does Familiarity breed inattention? Why drivers crash on the roads they know best

This paper describes our research into the nature of everyday driving, with a particular emphasis on the processes that govern driver behaviour in familiar, well - practiced situations. The research examined the development and maintenance of proceduralised driving habits in a high-fidelity driving simulator by paying 29 participants to drive a simulated road regularly over three months of testing. A range of measures, including detection task performance and driving performance were collected over the course of 20 sessions. Performance from a yoked control group who experienced the same road scenarios in a single session was also measured. The data showed the development of stereotyped driving patterns and changes in what drivers noticed, indicative of in attentional blindness and “driving without awareness”. Extended practice also resulted in increased sensitivity for detecting changes to foveal road features associated with vehicle guidance and performance on an embedded vehicle detection task (detection of a specific vehicle type). The changes in attentional focus and driving performance resulting from extended practice help explain why drivers are at increased risk of crashing on roads they know well. Identifying the features of familiar roads that attract driver attention, even when they are driving without awareness, can inform new interventions and designs for safer roads. The data also provide new light on a range of previous driver behaviour research including a “Tandem Model” that includes both explicit and implicit processes involved in driving performance

The effects of road commentary training on novice drivers' visual search behaviour: A preliminary investigation

One of the major challenges facing novice drivers seems to be adequately scanning, detecting, and responding to hazards which present during the course of everyday driving; a process that involves ‘reading the road’ and modifying driver behaviour accordingly. Previous studies have indicated that inexperienced drivers tend to utilise only a small proportion of the visual field when driving, and this limited visual search behaviour may play a significant role in the over-representation of young novice drivers’ involvement in crashes. This deficiency in visual search is especially evidenced through crashes occurring at intersections, or other densely populated road environments. More recently, road commentary has become of interest within a number of driver education initiatives, and several current studies have indicated that road commentary indeed improves drivers’ performance in hazard perception tasks. However, relatively little is known about commentaries influence on the underlying cognitive mechanisms responsible for enhanced situation awareness or hazard awareness, and whether such improvements generalize to a broader range of road scenarios. Using hazard perception and eye-tracking measures, we started to examine how road commentary could influence the way drivers visually accrue and process essential road information. First, our data confirmed that commentary training significantly increased the percentage of hazards identified. But additionally, preliminary eye movement data indicated that road commentary may have influenced visual search behaviour of the participants by ‘prompting’ them to allocate extra visual attention capacity to hazard rich areas, as evidenced by an increase of their fixation clusters across the visual field. This could help increase situation awareness, and convert to safer driving behaviour and reduced risk-taking

The impact of new oral fluid drug driving detection methods in Queensland: are motorists deterred?

Queensland Police Services have commenced random roadside drug testing of motorists to collectively apprehend as well as deter potential offenders. The present study aimed to examine a sample of Queensland drivers’ (N = 462) level of awareness of the new testing method as well as determine the impact of the countermeasure and other non-legal sanctions on intentions to drug drive. The findings revealed that respondents were generally unaware of the new testing method and a similar proportion remained uncertain regarding the effectiveness of detecting drivers who are driving under the influence of illicit drugs. An examination of the factors associated with intentions to drug drive again in the future revealed that perceptions of apprehension certainty was a significant predictor, as those who reported a lower certainty of apprehension were more likely to report intending to offend. Additionally, self-reported recent drug driving activity and frequent drug consumption were also identified as significant predictors, which indicates that in the current context past behaviour is a prominent predictor of future behaviour. The findings of the study confirm the popular deterrence-based assumption that increasing perceptions of apprehension certainty, such as through random road-side testing, may yet still prove to be an effective method of reducing the burden of drug driving on road safety

Development and validation of the Spanish hazard perception test

Objective: The aim of the current study is to develop and obtain validity evidence for a Hazard Perception test suitable for the Spanish driving population. To obtain validity evidence to support the use of the test, the effect of hazardous and quasi-hazardous situations on the participants’ Hazard Prediction is analysed and the pattern of results of drivers of different driving experience: learner, novice and expert drivers and re-offender vs. non-offender drivers, is compared. Potentially hazardous situations are those that develop without involving any real hazard (i.e., the driver didn’t actually have to decelerate or make any evasive manoeuvre to avoid a potential collision). The current study analysed multiple offender drivers attending compulsory re-education programmes as a result of reaching the maximum number of penalty points on their driving licence, due to repeated violations of traffic laws. Method: A new video-based hazard perception test was developed, using a total of 20 hazardous situation videos plus 8 quasi-hazardous situation videos. They were selected from 167 recordings of natural hazards in real Spanish driving settings