Newly licensed drivers are at an especially high risk of crashing. The first six months of solo driving are the most dangerous for teens; however, it appears that novice drivers improve their driving in a relatively short period of time as crash rates begin to drop dramatically during this time period of increasing experience. We have known for some time that failures of hazard anticipation, attention maintenance, and speed management are the primary causes of these crashes. Still, we have not seen a dramatic reduction in the inflated risk during the first several months with the current driver education programs and licensing restrictions, which indicates that we are not teaching newly licensed drivers all they need to know. With this in mind, we engaged in a series of five experiments designed to identify major differences in the hazard anticipation and attention maintenance skills of newly licensed drivers. On a driving simulator, we found that newly licensed drivers were up to six times less likely to anticipate hazards than much more experienced drivers. And they were up to three times more likely than experienced drivers to glance away from the forward roadway for more than two seconds. We then developed a hazard anticipation training program. We showed that this training program could increase the likelihood that newly licensed drivers would anticipate hazards, both on the driving simulator and the open road. (Author/publisher)
Abstract