Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

action selection task of Chapter 4, older learner drivers did not have a
significantly lower risk scores than younger learner drivers. This suggests
that what is measured by the photo task improves with experience and not
with age. This fact and the fact that on average female drivers had higher risk
scores than male drivers are indication that the photo task did not measure
the emotional and motivational aspect of hazard anticipation. As the
tendency to take risks in traffic among male drivers (especially among young
male drivers) is greater than among young female drivers (e.g. Laapotti,
Keskinen, & Rajalin, 2003) (see also Section 2.3.2), risk scores should have
been lower for males than for females, should the photo task have measured
the emotional and motivational aspect of hazard anticipation. The scores on
the photo task for learner drivers, novice drivers and experienced drivers
support the hypothesis that the photo task has convergent validity.
Controlled for exposure (expressed in number of car trips per week) crash
free novice drivers had a lower risk score on the photo task than novice
drivers that had reported a crash. This supports the hypothesis that the
photo task has concurrent validity. The photo task might be a low cost
alternative for the most commonly used hazard perception task in which
participants must push button or to point with their finger on the screen as
soon as they have detected a developing hazard while watching video clips
from the driver's perspective (e.g. Grayson & Sexton, 2002; Horswill et al.,
2008; McKenna & Crick, 1997; Sagberg & Bjørnskau, 2006; Sexton, 2000;
Wetton et al., 2010). As a possible test the photo task however also has
weaknesses. The ability to discriminate between learner drivers and
experienced drivers was poor in comparison to the version of the video task
in which participants had to mention the latent hazards in Chapter 4.
Although the internal consistency of the photo task was just acceptable to
study differences between groups, it is too low to test individual candidates.
The relatively low internal consistency of the photo task possibly results
from differences in difficulty of the individual test items. Some items were
easy and some items were difficult. Especially photographs with 'do nothing'
as correct response appeared to be too easy to answer.
The video task, the variant of the hazard detection and recognition task with
mouse clicks as respond method, failed to discriminate between the groups.
These results do not support the hypothesis that the video task has
convergent validity. This is surprising as the variants of this task applied in
Chapter 4 (mentioned latent hazards as response method and fixations on
covert latent hazards as response method) revealed considerable differences
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