Inappropriate driving behavior exhibited by drivers with the tendency of developmental disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify what kind of driving behavior that attributes from the disabilities is troublesome for drivers with developmental disabilities, what driving actions they are aware of as being hard to deal with, and what near-miss incidents and accidents they have experienced. This paper is composed of three studies. Study 1 is the observation of driving behavior of drivers with developmental disabilities on public roads. Study 2 is the interview survey on drivers with developmental disabilities. Study 3 is the interview survey on family members of drivers with developmental disabilities.It is confirmed that in Survey 1 “stopping the car just before the entrance of a busy parking lot of a store” and “driving too much on the right or left side, but not at the center of the lane” are some of the characteristics of drivers with developmental disorder, in Survey 2 more than half the survey subjects feel anxiety about “right turn at an intersection without a green allow signal”, “merging and changing lanes” and “placing a car in the garage”. When asking about inappropriate behaviors of the drivers with developmental disorder to the family members who are also specialists of developmental disorder in Survey 3, more than half of them brought up the issues including “having narrow field of alert vision and not aware of his/her surroundings”, “driving without predicting what is going to happen”, “not good at doing more than one thing at the same time”, and “easily getting distracted by any movement and noise in his/her surroundings”.