Are driving simulators effective tools for evaluating novice drivers’ hazard anticipation, speed management, and attention maintenance skills?

Abstract

Novice drivers (teen drivers with their solo license for six months or less) are at a greatly inflated risk of crashing. Post hoc analyses of police accident reports indicate that novice drivers fail to anticipate hazards, manage their speed, and maintain attention. These skills are much too broadly defined to be of much help in training. Recently, however, driving simulators have been used to identify those skills which differentiate the novice drivers from older, more experienced drivers in the areas of hazard anticipation and speed management. Below, we report an experiment on a driving simulator which compares novice and experienced drivers’ performance in the third area believed to contribute especially heavily to crashes among novice drivers: attention to the forward roadway. The results indicate that novice drivers are much more willing to glance for long periods of time inside the vehicle than are experienced drivers. Interestingly, the results also indicate that both novice and experienced drivers spend equal amounts of time glancing at tasks external to the vehicle and in the periphery. Moreover, just as a program has been designed to train the scanning skills that clearly differentiate novice from experienced drivers, one might hope that a training program could be designed to improve the attention maintenance skills of novice drivers. We report on the initial piloting of just such a training program. Finally, we address a question that has long been debated in the literature: Do the results from driving simulators generalize to the real world? We argue that in the case of hazard anticipation, speed management, and attention maintenance the answer is yes.

Estrategias de búsqueda visual en conductores expertos y noveles durante la visualización de escenas de tráfico

“…Todo ello podría convertirse en una de las causas que explicasen la mayor probabilidad que tienen los conductores inexpertos de estar implicados en situaciones de riesgo para la conducción (Chan, Pradhan, Pollatsek, Knodler, & Fisher, 2010;Cooper, Pinili, & Chen, 1995). Tejero et al (2004) realizaron una revisión de estudios sobre la exploración visual de conductores con distinta experiencia a partir del registro de los movimientos oculares, determinando que una de las variables que mejor discriminan a ambos colectivos de conductores es el tiempo de fijación visual, así como la mayor flexibilidad que poseen los conductores expertos en obtener información relevante para las situaciones cambiantes de conducción.…”

Pedestrian Representation Through the Analysis of Little Stories

“…Studies show that young drivers have difficulty in identifying hazards (Pollatsek, Fischer, & Pradhan, 2006;Scialfa et al, 2011) and that driving experience increases anticipation (Chan, Pradhan, Pollatsek, Knodler, & Fisher, 2010;Garay-Vega, Fisher, & Pollatsek, 2007;Groeger & Chapman, 1996). However, when studying the reactions to attitudes of civility and incivility, these reactions seem to be shared by all drivers.…”

Hybrid Auditory Based Interaction Framework for Driver Assistance System

“…The subjects would not drive on the same route more than once (different routes and driving conditions). Therefore, these experiments are not repeated to ensure maximum dependability of the driver on the DAS (Chan et al, 2010). While driving, questions based on the earlier reading material will be posed to the driver that will later produce a situation where the driver is talking to passengers in the vehicle while driving based on the direction and guidance (simulating cognitive load) from DAS (Iqbal et al, 2010).…”