Experience Advantage of Driver to percept Pedestrian’s Hazard Under Car-following Condition

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6) : 1340-1346.

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PDF(649 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6) : 1340-1346.

Experience Advantage of Driver to percept Pedestrian’s Hazard Under Car-following Condition

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Abstract

Hazard perception refers to drivers’ cognitive process of identifying, predicting and reacting to the obvious and latent hazard. Previous studies have shown that both experienced and novice drivers were good at detecting pedestrian-related hazard. We doubted whether the experienced drivers can detect pedestrians well if the hazard were combined with a potential hazard(eg pedestrian and car braking together). We therefore, conducted two experiments to explore different drivers’reaction time and their eye movements by setting two traffic scenarios:single hazardous condition( only pedestrians) and multiple hazardous conditions(pedestrian combined with the vehicle in front of the driver). In the first study, we used Tobii T120 type eye tracker to examine the behavior and eye movements by combined the reaction method and eye movements technique. Experiments is a 2 (traffic scene: pedestrian scene, pedestrians - the front car scene) ×3 (group: no driver's license, novice, experienced driver) mixed design, with traffic scene being the the within subject variable and the groups being the between subject variable. Participants were asked to watch a video of traffic scenes, when they detected a hazard, they should press the key immediately. The results show that: In the case of pedestrian-car condition, the experienced group’s reaction time is faster than novice group (p = .039) and no driver's license group (p = .013), F (2,30) = 3.98, p = .029. No driver's license group’s average fixation duration on pedestrian was longer than the experience group (p = .043) and the novice group (p = .024), F (2,30) = 3.39, p = .047, η2 = .18. No driver's license group’s level of searching breadth was less than (p = .006) the experienced group and the novice group (p = .016), F (2,30) = 5.17, p = .012, η2 = .26. In the second study, we further examined the impact of double hazard scene on drivers’ hazard perception and information processing efficiency. Experiments is a 2 (AOI type: pedestrian, the vehicle in front) × 3 (group: no driver's license group, the novice group, experienced group) two-factor mixed design, with AOI type being the the within subject variable and the groups being the between subject variable. The results showed that: the experienced group’s total fixation time on the front car was significantly shorter than the novice group (p = .014) and no driver's license group (p = .003), F (2,30) = 5.99, p = .006 . The experienced group’s average search time of the front car was significantly shorter than the novice group (p = .014) and no driver's license group (p = .004), F (2,30) = 5.50, p = .009. In the case of the front car condition, the average search time is longer, the longer the time their reaction time to pedestrians by controlling of the sex and age (β = .393, p <0.05, R2 = .308). These results indicate that: the inexperienced and novice drivers’ bad behavior were not just due to the fact that operations of the car snatch cognitive resources or caused by emotional factors. Lower efficiency of information processing, the inflexible search mode will also leads to a higher accident rate, which is one of the reasons for the novice driver traffic collisions. In the future, driver training should be strengthened for the novice driver on their visual search skills, and continue to provide more educational opportunities for the drivers.

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Experience Advantage of Driver to percept Pedestrian’s Hazard Under Car-following Condition[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2015, 38(6): 1340-1346
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