Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

students, whereas participants that did DATS in the vehicle cap simulator
were recruited at local Department of Motor Vehicle offices when people
apply for their learner's permits.
Finally, Wang, Zhang & Salvendy (2010) developed a simulator-based
training program for novice drivers in which eight critical situations where
embedded in the scenario; seven overt latent situations and only one covert
latent hazard situation. After the training drive, each participant watched the
video from the driver's point-of-view of his (only young male novice drivers
participated in this study) own performance in the critical situation and then
viewed a video in which an experienced driver averted the hazards. To
assess training retention, an evaluation drive on the same simulator was
arranged six weeks after the training. The scenario of the evaluation drive
differed from the scenario in the training drive. Four of the situations in the
evaluation drive were near transfer situations and four were far transfer
situation. The dependent variables were the scores on a 5-point scale by two
independent assessors that were blind with regard to the condition. A score
of 1 meant involvement in a crash and a score of 5 meant good hazard
anticipation. Scores were significantly better for the trained group than for
untrained group in six out of the eight critical situations. This was the case
for both near transfer situations and for far transfer situations, but the effect
was greater in the near transfer situations than in the far transfer situations.
The results of the effect of simulator-based hazard anticipation training are
not conclusive. The didactical methods ranged from mere one time exposure
to immanent hazards (Regan et al., 1999; TRAINER., 2002) to a debriefing in
which participants saw a video of their own performance and the
performance of an expert (Wang et al., 2010). It seems that mere exposure to
immanent hazards during a simulator drive is not sufficient. Participants
have to be challenged to discover (by trial and error) why the critical event
occurred and what they themselves can do to prevent it from happening the
next time. It could be that Regan et al. (1999) did not find an effect whereas
Ivancic & Hesketh (2000) did, because Ivancic & Hesketh (2000) made use of
the principles of error learning. Errors are usually salient, unexpected events
that can motivate further learning about a task. The negative feedback
provided by errors that are transparent to the individual who commits them,
creates an element of surprise that temporarily halts task performance while
learners try to work out why the error occurred. This is thought to delay the
automatization of a skill and to increase the duration under which the task is
performed using controlled processing (Kulhavy, 1977). Ideally, a simulator-
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