Recent work on a driving simulator points more precisely to the differences between novice and experienced drivers. Thus, it is important to discover which failures are particularly characteristic of newly-licensed drivers in order to determine why the crash rate is so much higher for newly-licensed drivers. However, it is likely that newly-licensed drivers experience at least some of these failures more often than experienced drivers. Admittedly, experienced drivers who get into crashes also fail to scan the roadway, manage their speed and maintain attention. It has been argued from police crash reports ( McKnight and McKnight, 2003) and related crash statistics ( Braitman, Kirley, McCartt and Chaudry, 2008) that the crashes were due largely to failures to scan the roadway ahead, failures to manage speed, and failures to maintain attention. The crash risk for younger, newly-licensed drivers (teen drivers with a solo license for six months or less) decreases radically over the first six months ( McCartt, Shabanova, and Leaf, 2003 Mayhew, Simpson and Pak, 2003 Vlakveld and Twisk, 2005). Finally, we address a question that has long been debated in the literature: Do the results from driving simulators generalize to the real world? We argue that in the case of hazard anticipation, speed management, and attention maintenance the answer is yes. We report on the initial piloting of just such a training program. Moreover, just as a program has been designed to train the scanning skills that clearly differentiate novice from experienced drivers, one might hope that a training program could be designed to improve the attention maintenance skills of novice drivers. Interestingly, the results also indicate that both novice and experienced drivers spend equal amounts of time glancing at tasks external to the vehicle and in the periphery. The results indicate that novice drivers are much more willing to glance for long periods of time inside the vehicle than are experienced drivers. Below, we report an experiment on a driving simulator which compares novice and experienced drivers’ performance in the third area believed to contribute especially heavily to crashes among novice drivers: attention to the forward roadway. Recently, however, driving simulators have been used to identify those skills which differentiate the novice drivers from older, more experienced drivers in the areas of hazard anticipation and speed management. These skills are much too broadly defined to be of much help in training.
Post hoc analyses of police accident reports indicate that novice drivers fail to anticipate hazards, manage their speed, and maintain attention. Novice drivers (teen drivers with their solo license for six months or less) are at a greatly inflated risk of crashing.
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