Are Parents and Learner Drivers Seeing the Same Road?

Young drivers remain overrepresented in road crashes. In Queensland, Australia, minimum practice requirements in a graduated driver licensing program sees parents providing the most driving supervision. Parents are likely to be experienced drivers with effective situation awareness skills (SAS), however parents and learners – who do not have effective SAS – may not realize they are not ‘seeing the same road’ while they are practicing, with considerable safety and learning implications. The study investigated the SAS of learner drivers and parents. Learner-parent dyads (12) provided verbal commentary regarding ‘what they were looking at’ (insight into SAS) during viewing of a 15-minute segment of real-world driving footage projected in a cave-simulation environment. The SAS of learners and parents contained 24 shared concepts, with 6 unique concepts each; however parents uttered significantly more words during the verbal commentary. In addition, the concept network differed in structure, with learners focusing on complex but infrequent maneuvers such as merging, while parents had a greater focus on the road environment (e.g., traffic lights), the road context (e.g., left lane), and the location (e.g., behind) and behavior of other road users (e.g., crossing). The findings suggest that learners are aware of risks in their environment – the ‘perceiving’ component of SAS – however they appear less capable in ‘comprehending’ and ‘projecting’ these risks. Intervention which strengthens their comprehension and projection skills appear warranted, and support to scaffold parents as the main facilitator of SAS skills in the novice driver merits consideration.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB30 Standing Committee on Operator Education and Regulation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Scott-Parker, Bridie
  • Caldwell, Jamie
  • Jones, Christian
  • Hansen, Nick
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alertness; Behavior; Graduated licensing; Parents; Risk assessment; Teenage drivers
• Geographic Terms: Queensland
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01588991
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-1627
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 30 2016 6:07PM