A review on impact of human factors on road safety with special focus on hazard perception and risk-taking among young drivers

Abstract

Road traffic accidents represented as the third cause of “death and disease” also the major cause of death among young people aged 15-29 years. In recent decade consequential investigation has been conducted on road crash contributing factors. All these researches showed that the recurrence and severity of accidents depend on many causes, such as vehicle performance, roadway environment, and characteristics of road users. Despite many studies in this field, the function of human factors on road accidents, is still unclear, due to the complex human characteristics. The lack of comprehensive model or procedure for scrutiny and evaluating the human characteristics which contributed to road incidents, motivate us to review on previous studies in order to indicate the relationships between human factors and road safety. This paper focus on the natural driving behavior of drivers including hazard perception and risk-taking of drivers which is affected by age, perceptual/cognitive abilities and driving experience. The study clearly shows that the mentioned factors have a huge impact on road incidents. Therefore, this paper indicate and recommend a number of solutions in order to mitigate the severity and frequency of accidents caused by human errors. Also previous road safety studies will provide series of crucial information for improvement of driver licensing and their training procedure.