Exploring Chinese Drivers’ Hazard Perception With Two Types Of Stimulus

Many previous studies have found that accident involvement correlatedwith hazard perception of drivers. Hazard perception is defined an ability todetect potential hazard and anticipate how it would develop in traffic situation.Failure in identifying and responding timely to hazards may increase crash risk.Therefore, hazard perception is an important variable that can make distinctionbetween novice and experienced drivers. Hazard perception has been the hotsubject of research for recent years. However, in China, this subject has not yetdeveloped and its methodology and apparatus have considerably fall behind theworld.The present study imported their typical methodology and latest materialsfrom foreign studies. We replicated the Huestegge’s study and Wetton’s study respectively. This research used Chinese drivers as sample examine whether theresults from their studies would reoccur in the Chinese drivers.In addition, this research creatively combined the dynamic video-based testand the static picture-based test. We explored which of two types could producethe greater expert effect. The two types of tests would examine differentmechanism of hazard perception ability of drivers. We discussed which aspectsof mechanism could account for the greater variation in the hazard perceptiondifference between novice and experienced drivers.This research included two experiments. In experiment1, static pictureswere used as experimental materials. The experiment was designed as2(noviceversus experienced drivers)×3(high-risk level, medium-risk level, low-risk level)mixed design. The aim of this experiment was to explore the effect of drivingexperience and risk level of the traffic scenes on hazard perception. In theexperiment2, we explored the effect of driving experience on hazard perceptionby using dynamic video-based test. From the analysis of the results, the conclusion was:The static picture-based test failed to discriminate between novice andexperienced drivers. There was no difference in respond times between noviceand experienced drivers. In the video-based test, experienced drivers respondedsignificantly faster than novice. The video-based test had the better ecologyvalidity.In static picture-based test, the higher risk level the traffic scene possessed,the faster and more frequency the drivers responded.In both experiments, the experienced drivers responded more frequencythan novice, which indicated the threshold of experienced drivers was lower andthey are more likely classify an event hazardous.By comparing two types of tests, the specific mechanism referring to thedifferences between novice and experienced drivers could be that experienceddrivers could effectively use cues in traffic circumstance and predict how the situation develop rather than orient the sudden hazard and respond rapidly in anew situation.