Impact of driving routine on a near-miss car accident

Abstract

Driving the same route every day leads to a certain driving routine. As we pass by at any specific spots several times, we get to know – at least subjectively – where the relatively safe and dangerous sections are and where we think having to watch out carefully or not. The activation of such routine patterns can free up cognitive resources which in return could be spent on the driver’s awareness. In a preceding study, however, we found evidence that routine behaviour does not necessarily lead to a better driving performance in any case. During a simulator task, 11 participants were asked to drive a specific route for several times, where they passed a stopping bus five times at the same spot. In the sixth round though, a person unexpectedly crossed the street when the participant’s car was approaching the bus. The participants reduced their speed drastically and focused the area of danger longer and more often the immediate round after this incident. But after a short time (five more trials), their behaviour seemed the same as before this near car accident - or even worse. Therefore, the utilization of a routine pattern might be dangerous, especially if the pattern itself underlies safety relevant misperceptions. We present data of a second and somewhat larger study, in which we not only try to validate these findings on more participants, but also try to establish driver’s routine with more trials on different days. Also, we add a control group and increase the number of near miss car accidents for the experimental group to find out whether an increased number of incidents can contribute to a safer way of driving several trials after the incident. We’re expecting that the twofold exposition to the near miss car accident will lead to a more enduring effect of the incident and therefore we hypothesize that the driver’s speed will be reduced and the attention will be more focused on the bus (higher dwell times, higher fixation times, more fixation counts and a faster time to first fixation) not only after the incident, but also – and, more importantly, after a certain period of time