Abstract
The present study empirically examined a novel dual process model of self-reported aberrant driving behavior in young and novice drivers that incorporates both impulsive and self-regulatory processes. Four hundred and nine participants aged 18–25 years (M age = 21.18 years, SD = 2.12; 65.5% females) completed online questionnaires on impulsivity, normlessness, sensation seeking, emotion and self-regulation, and attitudes toward driving safety. Path analysis showed that motor impulsivity was associated with self-reported driving violations, errors, and lapses, whereas sensation seeking was uniquely directly associated with self-reported errors. Non-planning impulsivity, normlessness and sensation seeking had significant indirect effects on self-reported errors, via self-regulation. Finally, motor impulsivity and normlessness had a significant indirect effect on self-reported violations, errors and lapses, via attitudes to driving safety. Based on our findings we suggest that a dual-process approach is relevant to the study of aberrant driving behavior in young and novice drivers, and the results of the present study have important implications for initiatives to promote driving safety in this population.
Highlights
According to the 2016 World Health Organization report on road safety, over a million people die in road traffic crashes (RTCs) each year, and traffic crash-related injuries represent the leading cause of death among young people aged between 15 and 29 years (World Health Organisation, 2016)
Of the System 1 traits, motor impulsivity was significantly directly associated with all three outcomes with coefficients of a similar magnitude, while sensation seeking was statistically uniquely directly associated with self-reported driving errors
Our second hypothesis was that the association between System 1 psychological factors and self-reported driving behavior would mediated by self-regulation and attitudes to safe driving, which pertain to System 2 processes
Summary
According to the 2016 World Health Organization report on road safety, over a million people die in road traffic crashes (RTCs) each year, and traffic crash-related injuries represent the leading cause of death among young people aged between 15 and 29 years (World Health Organisation, 2016). The Decade of Action for Road Safety (DARS) 2011–2020 represents a United Nations initiative that aims to improve road safety and reduce by 50% the number of deaths attributed to traffic injuries and RTCs, especially among young drivers. One of the key action areas of the global plan to achieve the DARS 2011–2020 goals is road user behavior, according to the UN Road Safety Collaboration (World Health Organisation, 2019). A recent evaluation of actual RTC data showed that driver behavior was a main risk factor in 90% of the observed crashes (Dingus et al, 2016)
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