Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

production of the animation clips had been updated with a plug-in to
simulate vehicle and pedestrian behaviour. Participants no longer could click
on rectangles to the left and the right to indicate that they would have looked
left or right for possible hazards. The maximum number of clicks per pause
was reduced to two and the length of a pause was reduced to three seconds.
This was done to reduce the opportunity to search for latent hazards not
already detected while the video clip was running. Also the number of
pauses was reduced. Each video clip now contained three pauses.
Instead of written information on the screen, a video clip was made to
introduce the task. In this video clip, participants could hear and see how the
task had to be performed. Also the difference between overt latent hazards
and covert latent hazards was visualised. In contrast to the first version of the
video task, participants received feedback about where to click after they had
made clicks in the first of the two trial videos for familiarization.
The scoring was simplified too. Only clicks on the predefined latent
hazards counted (both covert latent hazards and overt latent hazards) and
one correct click was one point. As there were almost three times as many
overt latent hazards than covert latent hazards, for the calculation of the
overall score, the score on covert latent hazards received as much weight as
the score on overt latent hazards. As in the previous version, irrelevant clicks
reduced the final score with one point.
5.3.2. Participants
In order to maximize the possibility of a significant difference, learner drivers
were not compared with experienced drivers, but with professional drivers.
All participants were recruited on the spot at the test centre of CBR in the city
of Eindhoven. After candidates heard they had passed the test and had to
wait for documents, they and their driving instructors that were also present,
were asked to do the task. Between sessions, examiners were asked to
participate in the test as well. Thus, the group of professional drivers
consisted of professional driving instructors and driving examiners. The
number of participants that refused was not registered. The groups were:
• Leaner drivers on the day they successfully passed the driving test: n =
37; mean age: 21.1; SD = 4.9; 40.5% male;
• Professional drivers (driving instructors and driving examiners): n = 39;
mean age: 46.2; SD = 12.1; 74.4% male.
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