Driving Instructors are Not Much Better (At Least Sometimes) in Explaining Driving Safety than Ordinary Drivers

The paper reports two studies which were both aimed at exploring differences in the judgement of traffic safety and risks by experts and ordinary drivers. In both studies the group of experts was comprised of driving school instructors. The first study focused on the risk judgements that drivers and experts make on the basis of traffic rule violations in order to predict road accidents. The second study explored driver and expert assessments regarding unwritten driving rules that are related to safe vs. risky driving. The studies demonstrated that experts are only slightly better than ordinary drivers in judging the degree to which traffic accidents are related to violations of certain traffic rules. There were only very slight differences in rating the degree to which an average Latvian driver follows unwritten driving rules. Experts and ordinary drivers did not differ in their assessments on the extent to which particular unwritten traffic rules facilitate traffic safety. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p41