| As reported by World Health Organization in 2012,road accidents represent the primary cause of death among young people,especially those aged from 15 to 29.Studies have proved that the occurrences of road traffic accidents are under the influences of comprehensive conditions in the road traffic system that composed of the four elements of environment,road facilities,vehicles and equipment,and drivers.In these constituent elements,the human factor accounts for the highest proportion of all causes,up to 90 percent.Therefore,in order to reduce road traffic injuries and accidents,it is vital to study the cognition,perception and analyzing process,as well as corresponding driving behaviors of young drivers.Compared with other groups of drivers,young drivers are generally being over-confident about their own driving skills and are more prone to conduct risk-taking driving behaviors.At present,the research on the group of young drivers is mainly focused on their driving behaviors and influencing factors in daily or normal road environment.Thus,it is urgent to study the driving behavior of young drivers and its relationship with traffic accidents under the circumstances of driving overseas or non-daily road environment.On the basis of the existing domestic and overseas research,this paper aims at the risk-taking driving behavior of young Chinese drivers,then based on the subjective self-rating questionnaire survey and objective virtual simulation driving experiment.Currently,the whole procedure could be concluded as three phrases,the first phrase is about literature review and unstructured interviews.The second phase includes questionnaire design,testing and revising,as well as formal sampling.At last,74 young Chinese drivers in Milan,Lombardy,Italy voluntarily took part in this survey.The third phase consists of the construction of virtual simulation model,experimental design,pre-test modification and formal experiment,which fourteen virtual driving scenarios were tested in one driving route among 22 Chinese young drivers.A comparison was analyzed between the responses and driving performance among sample.Statistical analysis was conducted after quantified the demographic information,self-assessed driving skills,driving behavior,hazard perception and virtual driving performance.Specifically,the single factor variance analysis,multivariate analysis of variance and linear regression analysis were implemented to examine the correlations among variables.The questionnaire result shows a significant correlation among sex,driving experience,road traffic accidents and violations,risk perception and self-assessment of driving skills.Further confirmation was made that young drivers are generally overconfident about their own driving skills.The results of virtual simulation test present that there is no direct relationship between the knowledge of road traffic regulations and the driving performance in virtual driving experiment.Moreover,drivers with high rating of their own driving skills have conducted more driving violations and mistakes.Compared to the cognitive understanding of some specific road driving regulations,the driving decision made by the driver and their actual driving behaviors in the virtual driving are in line with the self-assessed driving skills that provided in the questionnaire.The significance of current study is to explore and improve the understanding of the relationship between human factors,road environment facilities and risk-taking driving behaviors for the issue of young Chinese drivers driving overseas.Moreover,indicating the importance of self-assessed driving skills,especially from the perspective of defensive driving skills and its influences on driving behaviors.Additionally,serving the purpose of providing reference values for the design and development of auxiliary driving equipment,the implementation and promotion of relevant driving training services as well. |
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