Crash Involvement Mechanism And Driving Behavior Pattern Of Chinese Carless Young Drivers

Carless young drivers refer to those drivers aged between18and25years,who have their driver’s licenses but seldom get opportunities to practice theirdriving skills because they do not have their own cars. Because of China’s lowerprivate car ownership, many young drivers turn into carless young drivers afterlicensure. Due to immaturity and inexperience, many carless young drivers havepoor driving skills, are less likely to deal with risky situations effectively and areeasily stressed in emergencies when driving by themselves, making them highlyoverrepresented in traffic crashes in China. The safety issue associated withcarless young drivers has become a matter of great concern in China recentlyand which may become a universal problem facing the other developingcountries with similar driving conditions. This study provides initial insight intothe crash involvement mechanism and the driving behavior pattern of theChinese carless young drivers, with a view to explore effective interventionmeasures and improve their driving ability gradually, steadily and rapidly.First, an accident causation scale was developed based on the majorinfluential factors of carless young drivers’ crash involvement and a total of443carless young drivers completed the scale. The relationships between the subscales were explored and the crash involvement mechanism model wasobtained through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed thatmost of the carless young drivers’ crashes were single car accident caused bythemselves. Marital status and lifetime mileage had homogeneity effect oncarless young drivers’ safety attitudes, driving anger, driving skill, emotionalpressure, risk behavior and crash involvement. The lifetime mileage of5000kmwas a critical point for carless young drivers after which their safety attitudesbegan to shift from negative to positive, and their risk behavior and crashfrequencies began to decrease. Personality and driving skills were exogenouslatent variables which influence carless young drivers’ crash involvementindirectly through mediated variables such as safety attitudes, driving anger,emotional pressure and risk behavior. Emotional pressure had a direct negativeeffect on crash involvement while risk behavior had a directly strong positiveeffect on crash involvement. The safety attitude had a strong indirect effect oncrash involvement through the risk behavior variable.Second, the original Driving Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) was modifiedaccording to Chinese driving culture and a total of523carless young driverscompleted the modified DBQ. The factor structure, aberrant driving behaviorlevel and the relationships between the demographics, the DBQ scales variablesand crash involvement in the previous year were investigated through statisticalanalysis methods. The explorative factor analysis produced a four–factorstructure identified as errors, violations, attention lapses and memory lapses, and the confirmative factor analysis revealed a good model fit after the removal ofone item with a low factor loading and the permission of the error covariancebetween some items. The carless young drivers reported a comparatively lowlevel of aberrant driving behaviours, especially for the violations scale. Thosecarless young drivers who reported being crash involved in the previous yeartended to drive more mileage and have higher violations scale scores. Lifetimemileage was the only significant predictor of the violations scale. It was only theviolations factor which was found to be significantly predictive of crashinvolvement in the previous year.Third, a low-cost, fixed-base driving simulator was developed based on theChinese traffic environment. A simulated driving experiment was conducted tomeasure33carless young drivers’ simulated driving performance. The resultsshowed that carless young drivers had lower ability to maintain the stability ofspeed and lane position, drove more cautiously approaching and passing throughthe red traffic light, and committed more accidents during simulated driving.Speeding tendency was not found among the carless young drivers since theiraverage speed and speeding frequency were all much lower than that of thecontrol group. Carless young drivers were more overconfident of theirself–reported driving skills, they reported similar errors, more attention lapses,less memory lapses and significantly less violations behaviors, whereassimulated driving results revealed that they committed significantly more errors,attention lapses and violations behaviors than the control group. Lifetime mileage was the only significant predictor of their self–reported violations,simulated violations, speed, and reaction time.Fourth, an improved full cockpit driving simulator was developed containingfive common road hazards scenarios. A simulated driving experiment wasconducted to measure45carless young drivers’ hazard perception ability. Theresults showed that carless young drivers had a lower ability to response tohazards, their Reaction Times (RT) were all longer while their Time-to-Collision(TTC) were all shorter than the control group. Carless young drivers fixed moreand longer on the area of “off road”, while focus less and shorter on the area of“on road” and “in vehicle”. Carless young drivers had a higher mental workloadscores, they rated the driving in hazardous situations more difficult than thecontrol group. Moreover, carless young drivers had a lower ability to detect thepotential hazards and committed more crashes during the simulated driving.The findings in this study have important theoretical and practical impact forunderstanding the mechanism of carless young drivers’ traffic accidentoccurrence, reducing their crash involvement and exploring effective scientificintervention measures. The methods and main conclusions can also be extendedto similar research among the other drivers.