Lecture 9 Driving Behaviour

Question 1

What are some interventions that work when it comes to reducing accidents?

Answer 1

Speed enforcement
RBT
Seat belts and airbags
Traffic calming

Question 2

What are some interventions that don’t work at reducing accidents?

Answer 2

Vehicle control training

Compulsory skid training

Question 3

Interventions that sometimes do and sometimes don’t work when it comes to reducing accidents ?

Answer 3

Anti-locking braking systems. In car - increased risk. Out of car - decreased risk.

Question 4

What is the distinction between the two aspects of accident - related driver behaviour in the literature?

Answer 4

Driving style (risk-taking behaviour) 
Driving skill (driver performance/ability)

Question 5

What are some vehicle characteristics that increase risk taking?

Answer 5

Newer vehicles associated with higher accident involvement.
Studded tyres drive faster in icy conditions.
Anti-lock brakes driver closer to cars in front.
Greater acceleration capability pull into smaller gaps.
Adaptive cruise control travel faster, closer to the car in front and brake harder.

Question 6

What is an issue with the fact that cars are being made quieter?

Answer 6

car noise correlates with vehicle motion and therefore people lose an information source about the speed of their cars

Question 7

How did Horswill and McKenna (1999) manipulate speed choice without drivers knowing about it?

Answer 7

They had 115 ps assigned to 2 groups. Both groups did the validated video-based test of speed choice (would you drive faster or slower than this vehicle…). One group had loud auditory feedback and the other had quiet auditory feedback. Those in the loud group chose significantly slower speeds.

Question 8

What are some theories about why people choose to go faster when car noise is reduced ?

Answer 8

Reducing car noise makes driving speeds appear to be slower Hence people compensate by speeding up.
And inter-sensory integration of information suggests that the perceptual system combines senses to get a reliable estimate of the environmental state (ie. uses all senses to assess environment)

Question 9

Describe the study by Horswill and Plooy (2008) that looks at whether auditory cues influence speed estimation.

Answer 9

Used the method of constant stimuli to show ps a video sequence of a car travelling along a clear road. The speed of the car was either speeded up or slowed down. Ps were shown pairs of scenes and had to judge which was the fastest. Meanwhile the reference scene was either played with normal or reduced sound (-5dB). Found that reducing car noise made a reference vehicle appear to be travelling nearly 5kph slower.

Question 10

By how much does the magnitude of risk increase when cars are travelling 65kph as opposed to 60kph ? (Accounting for reducing noise effects)

Answer 10

Fatality risk increases by 35%.

Question 11

Why didn’t a Masters Drivers license ever progress to encourage increased drivers skill?

Answer 11

Because Williams and O’Neill (1974) found that highly skilled drivers had more accidents on public record than those in a control group.

Question 12

What is the only competent of driving skill that has been found to reduce accidents ?

Answer 12

Hazard Perception

Question 13

What is the range of correlations found for hazard perception and accident involvement? Is this practically important ? (Describe the study by Horswill et al (2010) which looks at self-reported crash risk and hazard perception).

Answer 13

Hazard perception and accident involvement correlates between .11 and .28. Yes it is practically important. Horswill et al (2010) looked at the relationship between self - reported crash risk and hazard perception in drivers over 65 and found that those who failed hazard perception were 2.37 times are likely to crash.

Question 14

Why are effect sizes so small when looking at hazard perception and crash involvement ?

Answer 14

Becuase car crashes are rare.
Accidents are caused by multiple factors.
Accident involvement is a psychometric nightmare.

Question 15

Why is accident involvement a psychometric nightmare?

Answer 15

Because accident involvement correlates with itself by .31.
And accident reporting is subject to tonnes of biases (people forget they were in crashes, people unlikely to report minor crashes, controlling for exposure is an issue)

Question 16

What percentage of deaths is accounted for by transport each year? How many of these deaths were due to car and motorbike accidents?

Answer 16

1% of deaths accounted for by transport each year. Of these 44% due to car accidents and 14% due to motorbike accidents.

Question 17

What are some arguments for the idea that hazard perception is a skill?

Answer 17

Hazard perception is a pattern - matching task, cues help retrieve memories of previous hazard perception issues. Increased store of hazards in memory = quicker retrieval. Or increased experience with non- hazards = quicker identification of a hazard. If it is a skill then hazard perception should get quicker with practice.

Question 18

How did McKenna and Farrand (1999) use a dual task paradigm to test if hazard perception was a skill and could be processed with automaticity when an expert?

Answer 18

Had novice bad experienced drives complete a hazard perception test either on its own or whilst performing a verbal task similultaneously. Found that hazard perception decreased significantly across both groups when verbal task was involved. Also found that experienced drivers tended to put more mental effort into their hazard perception so perhaps not automatic. P

Question 19

What are some results that suggest that hazard perception may be better thought of as an effort full proactive process?

Answer 19

Rowe (1997) found that experienced drivers have better incidental memory for hazards than novices which suggests that experts process hazard more elaborately than novices. If hazard perception was automatic then hazardous events ought to be less - not more likely to be remembered.

Question 20

What are some exercises involved with the latest hazard perception package?

Answer 20

Generating own Commentary to video footage in traffic.
Listening to experts comment on same footage.
Generating predictions for what will happen next… and then listening to experts prediction.

Question 21

Did hazard perception training improve hazard perception in middle age drivers?

Answer 21

Yes and one week later effects were still apparent (although reduced)

Question 22

What is the relationship between hazard perception and confidence ? Why is this likely ?

Answer 22

As hazard perception increased (got training) then people were less likely to rate their performance as high (confidence decreased). Probably became more aware of potential hazards.

Question 23

What are the 3 reasons for increased fatality risk for motorcyclists ? Which is most likely to account for the most variance?

Answer 23

Behaviour of others towards motorcycles.
Behaviour of motorcyclists.
Increased physical vulnerability. - most likely to account for increased risk.

Question 24

What is the size arrival effect and how does it support the idea that 65% of motorcycle accidents are caused by vehicles pulling out infront of motorcycles at a junction?

Answer 24

The size arrival effect states that smaller objects are perceived to arrive later than larger objects. So the motorcyclists are perceived to be going slower than other cars hence the pull out.