Psychology 409a – Driving Psychology, April 17, 2006

“Driver Skill”

By Ruo Xie

 

J. Peter Rothe.  Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems that Make Traffic Safer( The University of Alberta Press).  Pg. 211-219.

 

Instructions for this assignment:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/g24-oral1.htm

 

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

 

·        Chapter attempts to contextualize the role of skill in driver’s on-road performance and behavior.

 

·        Skill:

o       Learned ability to perform some task effectively and efficiently.

o       Modern interest in skill derives from industrial psychology and human-engineering research.

o       Driving researchers and educators argue that driving is a complex skill

§         They present the idea to non-experts as a reason for taking driving more seriously.

o       In human-engineering sense, driving skills also involve the purely mental activity needed to maintain situational awareness and manage vehicle systems in a wide range of conditions.

o       Different degrees in driving skills:

§         As individuals learn, they climb a learning curve.

§         Not all driving skills will be honed to the same level of excellence.

 

  • Basic Human Capacities Underlying Driving Skill:
    • Driving skill built on a broad foundation of basic human abilities.
    • The human engineering perspective on driver failure focuses on the fact that driving demands may exceed a driver’s mental capacities at a given moment.
    • General abilities underlying driving skills may themselves be trainable.
    • Experience in training “generic” decision skills indicates it is possible to train some aspects of these cognitive skills.

 

  • Looking for the Whole Driver:
    • One way of finding out what parts of the driver’s skill are more or less critical is to investigate difference between groups with differing crash risks.
    • Experienced drivers as a group have important skill advantages.
    • Eight individual traits related to the excessive risk of collision for the young:
      1. steering control
      2. speed control
      3. parallel processing/multitasking (skill integration)
      4. visual search/scanning
      5. hazard detection
      6. risk assessment
      7. decision-making
      8. risky-lifestyle and risk-taking

 

  • Driver skill categories:

1.    Knowledge= cognitive/ memory

2.    Attention= cognitive/perceptual

3.    Detection= sensory/pre-attentional

4.    Perception= sensory/cognitive

5.    Evaluation= cognitive/affective

6.    Decision= cognitive/affective

7.    Motor Skill= perceptual-motor

8.    Imagination= cognitive

9.    Motivation= affective/social

10.   Responsibility= cognitive/affective/cultural

 

Links:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/12/0445217

This site gives people a glimpse of how technology can make even an average driver better. But can technology really bring annual auto injuries and deaths down.

http://ppc.uiowa.edu/driving-assessment/2001/Summaries/Driving%20Assessment%20Papers/18_Bogdonoff_Seymout.htm

This article described a mini driver skill modification training program. I thought it was great because it gave the participants a chance to actually test their skills and hone new skills on actual track.

http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/adr/skill_level.php

This site has a diagram showing the different level driving skills a person can achieve. It’s based on the UK police force so it might be very useful to any of us, very interesting though.

 

My Homepage:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409as2006/xie/xie-home.htm

 

Class Homepage:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/classhome-g24.htm