Driving Patterns of Novice Drivers – a Temporal Spatial Perspective

Graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems have had limited success in reducing crash risks among novice drivers; once the GDL ends, the crash risk increases. This study evaluates how driving patterns change among novice drivers after the accompanied driving stage that is required by the Israeli GDL system is completed and the solo driving stage begins. Location data (GPS blips) of the roundtrips of 193 novice drivers was recorded during a 12-month period. Roundtrips are defined as consisting of all trips recorded between the time the vehicle leaves the home location to the time it returns, resulting in a database of 51,918 roundtrips. Using the general additive model technique, the authors explored the time-series of various measures characterizing the roundtrips of novice drivers: driving duration; distance from home; number of trips; the distribution of drivers in roundtrips; and the number of unfamiliar destinations visited. When moving from the accompanied to the solo stage, novice drivers almost doubled the amount of roundtrips per driving day. They had more trips per roundtrip and shared less of these trips with more experienced drivers. In addition, the rate of new and unfamiliar locations visited per driving day prominently increased. The authors propose that novice drivers not only experience an increase in exposure (more roundtrips) but also an increase in driving complexity, as measured by the ratio of trips per roundtrip and unfamiliar locations visited per driving day. The results point to ways of improving novice driver training during the accompanied stage.