A high proportion of motorcycle casualty crashes involve drivers failing to give way to oncoming motorcycle riders at intersections. The present experiment aimed to (i) assess the associative learning approach in dynamic learning situations where the task was more representative of real driving, (ii) demonstrate transfer of learning from the static learning contexts to dynamic contexts that more closely simulate the judgements made when turning at intersections, and (iii) test the longevity of learning after a period of 12 weeks after a training phase. The results confirmed that associative learning interventions increase the likelihood of drivers to respond that they would wait for approaching motorcycles at intersections. However, such learned avoidance responses only occurred when the associative learning intervention used photographic stimuli, and the increase in learned wait responses that occurred for photographic stimuli in the initial phase of the experiment was extinguished in a follow-up test using video stimuli. When the intervention used video stimuli, there was no evidence of increased avoidance responses to motorcycles. Rather, the probability of a wait response to cars decreased in a manner that was consistent with inhibitory learning, and this latter effect persisted in a four-week follow up test. Conclusions and recommendations about the associative learning technique, and other methodologies, for training drivers to give way to motorcycle riders at intersections are provided. (Author/publisher)
Abstract