Risk perception was studied in subjets who estimated the risk involved in slides of traffic scenes. The findings were as follows: (1) Spanish reported higher levels of risk thant did U.S. drivers for the same traffic scenes; (2) younger drivers tended to report lower risk than did middle-aged drivers; (3) professional drivers tended to report more risk than did non professional drivers; (4) culture, subject group, and sex accounted for 34.4% of the variance in risk-ratings; (5) the characteristics of traffic scenes accounted for an additional 15.2% of the variance; (interactions of culture, subject group, and sex with the characteristics of traffic scenes accounted for another 4.1% of the variance; (7) U.S. drivers rated potential need for quick action as resulting in greater risk, while Spanish drivers were unaffected by this parameter. Conversely, Spanish drivers rated higher speed as being more risky than lower speed, while the risk estimates of U.S. drivers were unaffected by speed; (8) a total of 53.7% of the variance in risk-ratings can be accounted for by the studied independent variables and their first-order interactions.
Samenvatting