Transport Accident Commission

The over-involvement of young and/or inexperienced drivers in road accidents is a well established international phenomenon. Measures designed to make novice drivers safer per kilometre driven rather than reduce the number of kilometres they drive have failed to achieve positive outcomes. This report presents an applied literature review, designed to suggest future directions for the development of measures to improve novice driver performance. The report deals with the issues of age versus experience, licensing age, the driving task and models of driving behaviour and correlates of accident involved young drivers to provide important background information. The suggested future directions have been principally drawn from the sections on perceptual skills, hazard/risk perception, the cognitive domain, risk taking and information processing and resource allocation issues. It is suggested that it is only when the differences between concurrently performed skills in capacity allocation (a reflection perhaps of different priorities or differing degrees of validity in the driving schema) and the effects of skill interactions as a function of driving experience are known that valid decisions on skills based countermeasures can be made. (Author/TRRL)

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