Research On Difference Between The Experienced And Novice Drivers In Terms Of Hazard Perception

In recent years with the growing car ownership, more and more novice drivers come behind the driving wheel, which leads to a serious traffic safety issue:the accidents associated with the novice drivers are increasing. The driver behavior is the dominant factor in the road transport system, directly or indirectly causing the occurrence of accidents. Therefore, the exercise to strengthen the capacity of the novice drivers, especially the hazard perception, is an important factor to improve the traffic safety. In order to research this issue, the paper evaluates the differences of hazard perception between novice drivers and experienced drivers, and the contributing factors for the differences.Firstly, the paper researches on the differences of hazard perception between novice drivers and experienced drivers and proposes to conduct a comparative experiment of experienced and novice drivers as following:(1)participants consisted of79drivers who are further divided into3groups. One was the experienced driver group and in this group the drivers were those who had been driving for10years or more and driven more than8000km per year on average. The others were novice drivers who had been driving for4years or less and were randomly assigned to a trained and an untrained group. No participants had previously taken part in a hazard perception test. This assignment resulted in three independent groups:trained novices (n=27), untrained novices (n=29),and untrained experienced (n=23). The novice groups did not differ significantly in terms of gender, age, kilometers driven per year on average, total number of years of driving, accident involvement over the past3years, pure reaction time advanced driving qualification, and prior hazard perception training.(2)The experiment consisted of two tests.One is the hazard perception test, in which four dependent measures were available for each event, e.g., response time, response sensitivity (driver-group response distribution), the verbal description of the hazard instigator, and the eye movement pattern. Using these four dependent measures, the paper analyzes the difference in hazard perception between the experienced and novice drivers. The other is the hazard rating test which includes20traffic scenes. Participants were instructed to rate the potentials for a traffic conflict to occur in the next few moments after the occlusion on the same7-point rating scale used by the experts. Participants marked their ratings for each scene on a response sheet.(3)The hazard perception experiment revealed that the experienced drivers were significantly different from the novice drivers. The experienced drivers and trained drivers could perceive the potential hazard faster than the untrained drivers, but experienced drivers were not significantly different from any other groups in the obvious hazardous situations. At the same time, the hazard perception of experienced drivers and trained drivers varying with timing were marginally different from the novice drivers’as well. With regard to events that appeared "before-planned events",the response rate was relatively low and similar for all three driver groups, however, experienced and trained drivers responded nearly two times more than untrained drivers to events that appeared "after-planned events".However, in the hazard rating test there were not significant differences among three groups, suggesting that three groups of drivers perceived the hazard in the same magnitude, in other words, the three group drivers’sensitivity were not significantly different.Two comparisons revealed that novice drivers could identify the danger of scenes, which meaned there was no significant difference in sensitivity of hazard perception between the experienced drivers and novice drivers. So what caused the slow response of a novice driver to the less dangerous scene? It was because novices were slower to accumulate this evidence of potential hazard and allowed them to increase the response time. Alternatively, it was due to that novices could interpret the road situation just as accurately and quickly as experienced drivers did, but they were simply less willing to label situations as hazardous. Novices drivers needed to wait for developments to the more serious cases, they are willing to label situations as hazardous? In other words, how the mechanism affected the driver’s risk perception differences is subject to the drivers’information gathering capabilities. Or the threshold is not the same that drivers determine the risk?Secondly, the paper researches on the mechanism of difference between the experienced and novice drivers in term of risk perception, analyzes what caused the slow response of a novice driver to the less dangerous scene? It was because novices were slower to accumulate this evidence of potential hazard and allowed them to increase the response time. Alternatively, it was due to that novices could interpret the road situation just as accurately and quickly as experienced drivers did, but they were simply less willing to label situations as hazardous. Novices drivers needed to wait for developments to the more serious cases, they are willing to label situations as hazardous? In other words, how the mechanism affected the driver’s risk perception differences is subject to the drivers’information gathering capabilities. Or the threshold is not the same that drivers determine the risk? To address these issues, the paper presents to combine the fuzzy logic with signal detection theory, and analyzes the average value of sensitivity and response criteria in the hazard perception test and the hazard rating test through the fuzzy signal detection method. Statistical results found:In the hazard perception test, experienced drivers did not exhibit greater sensitivity than novices, t(50)=1.3317,P=0.1890.Similarly, the trained and untrained drivers did not differ in sensitivity, t(54)=1.4745,P=0.1462.The same outcomes happened in the hazard rating test, experienced drivers did not exhibit greater sensitivity than novices, t(50)=1.2192, P=0.2285.Similarly, the trained and untrained drivers did not differ in sensitivity, t(54)=0.7316,P=0.4676.However, the response bias measures reflected the latency differences between the groups better. The untrained novice group was significantly more conservative than trained novice groups, t(54)=3.0969,P<0.01.Similarly, untrained novice group was significantly more conservative than the experienced group, t(50)=3.7231,P<0.001.At the same time, response bias on the hazard perception test was significantly correlated with latency, such that more liberal responses were associated with faster latencies.Through experimental results described above,the response bias model can better explain the differences in the hazard perception test between the experienced drivers and the novice drivers. Because the drivers who have different response bias have the different response thresholds, They will take the different response strategies in the driving process of the same scene. Therefore, in the training for novice drivers the research cannot focus on the driver’s risk perception only. More importantly, it is recommended to reduce threshold of the novice driver through the training, so that the drivers will consider more scenes as hazard ones, and take operational measures in advance to prevent accidents.