Since the failure to heed signs is a frequent cause of accidents, this study examines how driving experience and expectations affect the ability of experienced drivers to identify traffic signs. Inexperienced and experienced drivers were connected to an eye tracker system and briefly exposed to various traffic scenes. Some of the pictures included a "no right turn" sign at the expected location (on the right), and some included the same sign at an unexpected location (on the left). The same procedure was used with a "no left turn" traffic sign. Results showed that experienced drivers identified traffic signs better than inexperienced drivers did when the signs were posted at the expected location. However, experienced drivers were worse than inexperienced drivers at identifying the traffic signs when the signs were at unexpected locations. These findings indicate that drivers' expectations regarding the expected location of traffic signs become so strong with experience that violating these expectancies results in more identification errors among experienced drivers than among inexperienced drivers. Signs must be located in accordance with drivers' expectations (i.e., on the right side of the road) in order to optimize experienced drivers' traffic sign identification.
Abstract