Understanding young drivers in Turkey: Time perspective, driving skills, and driver behaviors

2020-11-01
Tekeş, Burcu
ÖZDEMİR, FATİH
Özkan, Türker
Many studies have focused on the tendency of young drivers to drive riskily. However, little is known regarding time perspective, driving skills, and driver behaviors, even though time perspective is an important predictor of many risky behaviors. Time perspective is a general construct of the thoughts relating to present, past, and future. Broadly, (i) past time perspective is related to the recall of reconstructed past scenarios; (ii) present time perspective means attending to immediate and salient stimulus; and (iii) future time perspective is related to anticipation and imagining future consequences. In the present study, we investigated the effect of time perspective on driving skills and driver behaviors. Young drivers (N = 203, aged 18 to 30, M = 25.36, SD = 3.09) who drive their own vehicle at least 1000 km per year completed the Driving Skill Inventory, Driver Behavior Questionnaire, and Time Perspective Inventory. The canonical correlation findings revealed significant associations between the study variables. Lower scores on present hedonistic time perspective were associated with lower scores on perceptional-motor skills. Lower scores on past negative and present fatalistic time perspectives, and higher scores on past positive and future time perspectives were associated with higher scores on safety skills and lower scores on errors and traffic violations. These results provide a better understanding of the causes of young drivers' risky behaviors.
Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Suggestions

Self-Assessed Driving Skills and Risky Driver Behaviour Among Young Drivers: A Cross-Sectional Study
Lajunen, Timo; Sullman, Mark J. M.; Gaygısız Lajunen, Esma (2022-04-13)
The first few years of driving is a critical period when driving skills develop and the driving style is established. While the actual driving skills improve during the first few years of driving, a novice driver’s view of himself/herself as a safe and/or skilful driver also develops rapidly. The aim of this study was to investigate self-evaluated driver safety and perceptual-motor skills among different age groups of young drivers, along with the relationships between self-evaluated skills and driving beha...
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DRIVING-RELATED COGNITIONS AND ANXIETY IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVING SKILLS AND DRIVING BEHAVIORS
Azık Özkan, Derya; Öz, Bahar; Department of Psychology (2022-8-12)
Driving skills and driving behaviors, as being the human factors in driving, are the most studied and most influential variables of efforts to sustain a safe traffic environment. Although these factors were investigated in the literature and their relationships with different variables and each other are examined in various studies with various samples; anxiety-related factors have always been evaluated only within limited (avoidant) or clinical groups. However, anxiety, like anger, is a negative emotional ...
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DRIVING-RELATED COGNITIONS AND ANXIETY IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVING SKILLS AND DRIVING BEHAVIORS
Azık Özkan, Derya; Öz, Bahar; Department of Psychology (2022-9-5)
Driving skills and driving behaviors, as being the human factors in driving, are the most studied and most influential variables of efforts to sustain a safe traffic environment. Although these factors were investigated in the literature and their relationships with different variables and each other are examined in various studies with various samples; anxiety-related factors have always been evaluated only within limited (avoidant) or clinical groups. However, anxiety, like anger, is a negative emotional ...
Self-regulatory driving practices of old and young drivers
Azık, Derya; Özkan, Türker; Department of Psychology (2015)
The aim of the current study was to investigate self-regulatory driving practices of old and young drivers by examining underlying factors and possible benefits on drivers’ aberrant behaviors. 258 active male drivers (120 older, 138 younger) participated in the study. Older drivers’ age range was determined as 60-75 and younger drivers’ age range was determined as 21-30. For testing motivator factors of self-regulatory driving practices, Health and Functional Abilities Scale (Molnar et al., 2013), Self-Rate...
Learner driver follow-up study: attitude change and driver behavior
Biçer, Duygu Özlem; Özkan, Türker; Department of Psychology (2015)
Novice drivers are overrepresented in accidents especially at the beginning of solo driving. Learning process is important in driving because pre-attitudes and behaviors could determine the later driver behaviors. Therefore, driver education and training become irrefutably critical for safe driving. The first aim of the current study is investigating the attitude change of learner drivers through driver education and training by taking attitude measurements both before the beginning of education and after t...
Citation Formats
B. Tekeş, F. ÖZDEMİR, and T. Özkan, “Understanding young drivers in Turkey: Time perspective, driving skills, and driver behaviors,” Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pp. 0–0, 2020, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/56316.