Although most novice drivers do not have the ability to predict ahead of time the risks that will appear in the roadway, current driver education programs, do not emphasize the teaching of risk awareness skills to these drivers. This paper reports on the development and evaluation of the effects of a PC-based risk awareness and perception training program. The training involved using plan (top-down) views of 10 risky scenarios that helped novice drivers identify where potential risks were located and what information should be attended. Both the 24 trained novice drivers and 24 untrained novice drivers were evaluated on an advanced driving simulator. The eye movements of both groups of drivers were measured. The evaluation on the driving simulator included both scenarios used in the training and others not used in training. Results showed that the set of trained novice drivers were almost twice as likely as untrained drivers to fixate appropriately either on the regions where potential risks might appear or on signs that warned of potentially risky situations ahead, both for the scenarios they had encountered in training and for novel scenarios. The findings indicate that this PC-based training program shows great promise in improving risk perception for novice drivers.
Abstract