Is the Risk Behaviour Related to the Ordinary Driving Violations?

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated whether both the ordinary and the aggressive driving violations may be predicted by the number of pumps on the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and whether gender as well as alcohol use may explain for a different risk tendency. To this purpose, we assessed 123 (61 males) young car drivers with a minimum of 2 years of active driving experience and a valid driving license. None of them has been involved in car crashes or got a ticket for inappropriate driving behaviour. All participants filled in the Manchester Driving Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) and performed the BART. We found that men committed more self-declared ordinary violations than women, even if they did not differ from women in BART. We also found that the women who consume more alcohol self-declare more aggressive violations on DBQ than men. In general, we found that men and women who consume more alcohol have a higher index of riskiness on BART. Furthermore, a regression analysis showed that the index of riskiness measured by BART positively predicted both ordinary and aggressive violations, but not errors or lapses as measured by DBQ. The higher was the risk attitude, the higher was the tendency to deliberately make decisions to deviate from rules or safe driving and produce actions based on negative emotions. The study provides future implications for the need of a risk-taking assessment battery useful to address psycho-educational training in new drivers.