Gender and Hazard Perception Skills in Relation to Road Traffic Police Officers

Gender differences have been observed in driving styles and in the types of reported collisions that males and females are involved in. This study was conducted to examine gender differences in a hazard perception task independently of motion judgements. Participants were asked to rate a series of traffic still photos as to how hazardous they perceived the depicted situations to be. Several trained road traffic police officers were also asked to complete the task and act as an expert group with which the participants could be compared. The results showed that there was no gender difference, with males and females rating all scenes similarly, and that although the police officers demonstrated within-group consistency, there was no significant difference between their ratings and those of the civilians. It was concluded that hazard perception skills are not a major factor in the prevalence of collisions and that other factors such as overconfidence in one's own ability and consequent decision-making processes may account for many gender-related incidents.