title: On-road behaviour of younger and older novices during the first six months of driving.
abstract: Newly qualified drivers are known to have greater crash involvement than more experienced drivers, but does the on-road driving behaviour of young novices differ from that of older novices who might be expected to be more mature and to have different driving needs? Both younger and older novices were compared with experienced drivers in their behaviour driving an instrumented car on three occasions. The three drives were conducted within the novices' first few months of becoming qualified. All drivers, including both groups of novices, increased their average road speed over the three drives, and all increased their tendency to cut across the central lane marker on bends. The older novices showed some indications of becoming more cautious with experience, by doubling their headway after six months, and by increasing the number of times they glanced into their mirrors at critical points. This increased caution may be attributable to the driving experiences of the older novices, who had experienced twice the crash rate of the younger novices during their first six months of driving.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. geoff.underwood@nottingham.ac.uk
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Underwood
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Acceleration; Headway; Instrumented car; Novice drivers; Speed; Steering