Citation

Horswill MS, Taylor K, Newnam S, Wetton M, Hill A. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2013; 52: 100-110.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. Electronic address: m.horswill@psy.uq.edu.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2012.12.014

PMID

23314117

Abstract

We examined the proposal that hazard perception ability is suboptimal even in highly experienced mid-age drivers. First, we replicated previous findings in which police drivers significantly outperformed highly experienced drivers on a validated video-based hazard perception test, indicating that the ability of the experienced participants had not reached ceiling despite decades of driving. Second, we found that the highly experienced drivers' hazard perception test performance could be improved with a mere 20min of video-based training, and this improvement remained evident after a delay of at least a week. One possible explanation as to why hazard perception skill may be suboptimal even in experienced drivers is a dearth of self-insight, potentially resulting in a lack of motivation to improve this ability. Consistent with this proposal, we found no significant relationships between self-ratings and objective measures of hazard perception ability in this group. We also found significant self-enhancement biases in the self-ratings and that participants who received training did not rate their performance (either in real driving or in the test) as having improved, contrary to what was indicated by their objective performance data.

Language: en