5. Psychology of Driving Flashcards
What is traffic psychology?
the study of the behaviour of road users and the psychological processes underlying that behaviour
aims to apply theoretical aspects of psychology to improve traffic mobility and to develop accident countermeasures
What are some theoretical aspects of traffic psychology?
- cognition, attention, memory, visual search
- decision making
- learning
- perception
- human factors (organisational psych)
- personality
- social psych
- developmental psych
- motivation
- biopsych
- health
- forensic (legal aspects of driving, law enforcement)
What is the challenge for road safety psychologists?
- to understand why a crash occurred
- could it have been prevented?? if so how?
- could we change the road to make it safer, could we enforce road rules more effectively, could we challenge the optimistic view that drivers hold about their driving skills?
Have to try and increase the perception that RISKS do not payoff
What is the challenge for traffic engineers?
- design roads to accommodate risky behaviour
Why is it such a problem in NSW in particular?
Road toll surges by 11.7% but…
the number of fatalities due to driving is by far the largest in NSW –> gone up by 23%
Comparison from this year to last year in NSW
This year: 218 lives lost, predicted 355 by the end of year
Last year: 203 lives lost, 313 at the end of the year.
Serious injuries: 10555 compared to 9711
Who are the ones dying most?
- the drivers and their passengers
- mostly a male problem
Fatalities in the past 12 months:
181 drivers
62 motorcyclists
47 pedestrians
61 passengers
4 cyclists
Why is there a particular problem in rural and remote areas in Australia?
- 66% of road deaths occur in regional and remote areas
- 11.8 per 100 000 Australisn in remote areas
–> road quality
–> unpaved shoulders?
–> wild life?
–> speed (most occurr in high speed zones of over 100km / hr)
–> fatigue (single vehical run-of crashes are 44% of all crashes in remote areas)
When did the positive trend reverse?
Since 1970 - downward trend of fatalities
has been reversed since 2022
Why the reversal in this trend?
- Change in the type of vehicles being bought and their size
- SUVs and Utes now account for 78.4% of total sales in 2023
- these are problematic for vulnerable road users
- increased aggressivity (measure of serious injury risk vehicles pose to other road users)
- increased crashworthiness (rating the ability to prevent severe injury to their own drivers in crashers)
Why the increase in aggressivity?
- high fronts on SUVs cause larger blind spots (upto 4m)
- higher point of impact means that pedestrians are more likely to suffer head / neck injuries - more likely to be knocked down and run over
- children are 8x more likely to die when struck by an SUV
Why are people buying vehicles that consume more petrol, damage roads and pose safety threats?
- feel safer (crashworthiness)
- tax benefits, they were exempt from luxury car tax (sometimes making cars 11k more)W
Why focus on fatalities?
- they tell us about road mistakes: who, where and when
- fatalities are more reliable and detailed source of stats
- allows us to see who is at most risk of dying on the roads, what was the immediate cause of the crash, and where crashes tend to occur
Age / inexperience as a risk factor?
- young drivers are at risk during provisional license stage (age based effect separate to experience)
- red ps is the most dangerous driver
Why are they vulnerable?
- headway time / distance between vehicles too short
- too fast for conditoins
- not looking far enough ahead when driving
- gap selections too small when making turns
- 40% of these crashes occur at night
