In this paper the author presents an overview of the work we have done in Manchester focusing on the psychological determinants of road traffic crashes. It is known that human error plays a crucial role, but often the term error is used in a very broad sense. The authors' programme of work has identified three basic types of bad driving, initially using a 50 item self-report questionnaire, the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (Reason et al, 1990) The DBQ was administered to a national sample of 520 drivers, who were asked how often each of the behaviours happened to them in the course of their normal driving, using a simple frequency response scale, where 0 = never and 5 = nearly all the time. Factor analysis of their responses revealed three strong underlying dimensions, reflecting distinct types of bad driving that were statistically as veil as conceptually, different. The questionnaire was streamlined to 24 items, to include the eight top loading errors, lapses and violations. In a further study, the revised measure was completed by almost 1600 drivers, and the three factors were confirmed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract