The purpose of this study was to examine whether drivers' age and/or driving experience has any effect upon their perception of danger in respect of various driving scenarios. There were 64 subjects, 16 of each in one of 4 driving groups, rated according to age and experience. Each driver was asked to view 24 video films of the view through the windscreen during a drive through a junction in Cambridge. All videos were selected to show a range of traffic conditions at each site. None showed particularly dangerous or unusual occurrences. After each film the drivers were asked a series of rating questions about the risk each would have felt in the situation just witnessed, including how serious they felt any resulting accident would be, and whether they felt that they could cope with it. Analyses of the results was carried out using a) Principal Components Analysis; b) Varimax Rotation. The results indicate that drivers age and driving experience are dissociable in terms of the ways in which they evaluate driving scenes. Younger drivers tend to consider the potential danger in a scene far more readily than older drivers, and this is so irrespective of driving experience.
Abstract