Young driver behaviors in relations to the implicit and explicit driving skills

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2017
Öztürk, İbrahim
Road traffic accidents are one of the important public health problems for all age groups, especially for the young people. Young drivers show more aberrant driver behaviors and are overly represented in road traffic accidents. The driving skills and driver behaviors are important predictors of road traffic accidents. Driving skills and driver behaviors might be measured by using self-reports, driving simulators, and implicit measurements. In this thesis, the relationship between self-reported and implicit driving skills and self-reported and simulated driver behaviors were investigated among young female and male drivers. The results showed that, in general, unlike implicit driving skills, self-reported driving skills are important predictors of both self-reported and simulated driver behaviors. Self-reported safety skills were found to be negatively related to self-reported violations and the mean speed in different road segments in a driving simulator. Moreover, self-reported perceptual-motor skills were found to be positively related to self-reported violations and positive driver behaviors, and simulated speeding and lane keeping behaviors and negatively with self-reported errors. Overall, the results are important in terms of the examining the relationship between driving skills and driver behaviors. The study also showed that the characteristics of the driving simulation scenario are an important factor while examining the driving skills and driver behaviors. Future studies might be conducted by including different age and experience groups with different types of driving scenarios. 

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Citation Formats
İ. Öztürk, “Young driver behaviors in relations to the implicit and explicit driving skills,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2017.