Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

cassette or CD-player. Klauer et al. (2006) divided the population of drivers
in the 100-Car Naturalistic driving study in a group of drivers that had a
high involvement in crashes or near crashes and a group of drivers that had a
low involvement in crashes or near crashes. The average involvement was
3.6 crashes or near crashes. The mean age of the high involvement drivers
was 30 and the mean age of the low involvement drivers was 37. This
difference was significant. Figure 2.7 shows the frequencies of safety-critical
events due to distraction of high involvement drivers and low involvement
drivers per age group. The youngest drivers not only had the most safetycritical
events, but also more often belonged to the group of high
involvement drivers.
120
100
High involvement
Frequency of Events
80
60
40
Low Involvement
20
0
18-20 21-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+
Age groups
Figure 2.7. Number of safety-critical events of high involvement drivers and low
involvement drivers per age group (adapted from Klauer et al., 2006).
A possible explanation for the high involvement of young drivers in
distraction related crashes is that they more often engage in secondary tasks
than older drivers, especially with cell phones and smart phones. A second
explanation could be that as the basic tasks for operating the vehicle are not
yet fully mastered (not yet completely executed at the procedural stage) and
still require mental workload, the disruptive effect of secondary tasks is
greater for novice drivers than for experienced drivers. A third possible
explanation could be that novice drivers lack the skills to assess whether the
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