This article considers methodological issues relevant to the study of differential crash involvement and reviews the findings of research in this area. Aspects of both driving skill and driving style appear to contribute to crash risk. Of the former, hazard-perception latency appears to play an important role, and this may be attributable to generalized abilities to identify visual targets in a complex background and to switch attention rapidly. Of the latter, faster driving speed and willingness to commit driving violations increase crash risk, and these factors may be explicable in terms of personality and antisocial motivation. The article concludes with an examination of the practical implications and of the ways in which research in this area might usefully proceed.

Behavioral-correlates of individual-differences in road-traffic crash risk - an examination of methods and findings

Hazard and Risk Perception among Young Novice Drivers

The multidimensional driving style inventory—scale construct and validation

Previous research on visual search in driving suffers from a number of problems: small sample sizes, a concentration on mundane situations, and a failure to link results to more general psychological theory. The study reported in this paper addresses these issues by recording the eye movements of a large sample of drivers while they watched films of dangerous driving situations and comparing the findings with those from more general studies on scene perception. Stimuli were classified according to the types of road shown and the degree of danger present in the scenes. Two groups of subjects took part, fifty-one young novice drivers who had just gained a full driving licence and twenty-six older more experienced drivers. Dangerous situations were characterised by a narrowing of visual search, shown by an increase in fixation durations, a decrease in saccade angular distances, and a reduction in the variance of fixation locations. These effects are similar to the concept of 'attention focusing' in traumatic situations as it is described in the literature on eyewitness memory. When road types are compared, the least visually complex rural roads attracted the longest fixation durations and the shortest angular saccade distances, while the most visually complex urban roads attracted the greatest spread of search but the shortest fixation durations. Differences between the groups of subjects were also present. Novices had longer fixation durations than experienced drivers, particularly in dangerous situations. Experienced drivers also fixated lower down and had less vertical variance in fixation locations than novices.

Visual search of driving situations: danger and experience

Hazard perception and driving experience among novice drivers.

The report presents an analysis of the visual and perceptual abilities of 370 accident involved drivers in relation to their accident experience. The drivers were volunteers from a group who had been involved in road accidents investigated as part of an in-depth "at-the-scene" study conducted by TRRL. In addition to the results of tests of static and dynamic visual ability, performance tests in a driving simulator and other tests of particular aspects of cognitive performance, data were available for each road user on age, experience, sex, average distance travelled per year and self reported accident histories. The distributions of the various abilities are given in the report, as are the results of correlation and group comparison analyses. A predictive model of accident frequency as a function of age, exposure and some of the "higher order" test results is presented. Once age and exposure had been allowed for, no correlations between accidents and "simple" visual or performance tests could be detected. The implications of the accident model are discussed, and possible directions for future research suggested. (TRRL)

G Maycock

Papers

Perceptual abilities of accident involved drivers