Drivers' Illusion of Superiority for Hazard Perception and Vehicle Control Skill

One robust finding in the social cognition literature is that people tend to think they are superior to others and more likely to encounter positive future events than others across a number of domains (Taylor and Brown, 1988). These types of belief have been described as illusory because, while it is possible that any one individual might be better than average, it is not possible that everyone can be better than average. With respect to driving, it has been found that people tend to rate themselves as more skilful than average, safer than average (Groeger and Brown, 1989; Svenson, 1981), slower than average (Walton and Bathurst, 1998), and less likely to have an accident than average (McKenna, 1993). As an indication of how pervasive these beliefs are, McKenna, Stanier, and Lewis (1991) found that drivers rated themselves as better than average on 20 out of 20 different components of driving skill