Effectiveness of Training Interventions on the Hazard Anticipation for Young Drivers Differing in Sensation Seeking Behavior

Drivers younger than 25 years are overrepresented in fatal crashes compared to experienced drivers between 30 and 55 years of age. This age-related difference in crash statistics partly arises from younger drivers’ poor hazard anticipation. Training programs (e.g. SAFE-T; Yamani et al. (2016)) have been shown effective at improving these drivers’ anticipation behavior. However, individual differences such as sensation-seeking behavior, aggression, and driving violations exist in young drivers and may contribute to differences in their hazard anticipation. The current driving simulator study examined whether three individual differences known to characterize driving behavior can predict hazard anticipation performance for young drivers, and training effectiveness. K-mean clustering technique classified participants into two clusters based on their driving aggression, sensation seeking and driving violation scores. The results indicated that the low sensation-seeking drivers benefitted more from the training than their high sensation-seeking peers. These findings have design implications for the development of appropriate countermeasures for high sensation-seeking drivers