DRIVER CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR RELATION TO TRAFFIC CONFLICT OCCURRENCE

A traffic conflict is defined as a hazardous situation in which an accident is avoided by evasive action by the driver of one of the vehicles. Research on the use of conflicts as a traffic engineering tool has been focused on attempts to correlate conflicts and accidents so that conflicts, which occur more frequently than accidents, can be used as a basis for predicting future accidents. Several stratification and/or refinements to conflict measures have been introduced to achieve better correlation, but the use of driver characteristics has not been used in these research studies.; The objectives of this study were to determine the driver characteristics that are overrepresented in conflict involved drivers when compared to all Saudi Arabian drivers; the relationship of these characteristics to types of conflict; and the interrelationships between types of conflict and traffic control at the intersection. A final objective was to determine the possibility of predicting future conflicts by knowing the mix of driver characteristics at an urban intersection.; Conflict involved drivers observed at six different locations were found to possess similar characteristics, indicating that there is a pattern which defines hazardous drivers. Age was the single variable which explained the greatest variation in conflict involvement, but nationality, occupation, past accident experience and driver training were also significantly correlated with conflicts. Thus, predicting future conflict by knowing the mix of driver characteristics may be possible, but larger samples and more research is needed to achieve better correlation of variables in the multiple regression model.; The relationships between driver characteristics and conflicts found in this study were similar to relationships known to exist between driver characteristics and accidents. Thus, it appears that conflicts may be used to identify hazardous intersections when past accident records are not available.; Another conclusion reached in this study was that there are significant differences in the conflict rate depending on the training received by the driver. It appears that more strict driver licensing and enforcement of traffic regulations would decrease the conflict rate, and presumably the accident rate, in Saudi Arabia.