Can young novice e-bike riders identify hazardous traffic situations? An exploratory study

Introduction: Between 2013 and 2017, there has been a twenty-five-fold increase in the number of riders hospitalized as a result of an e-bike crash in Israel. Despite youngsters’ growing involvement in fatal and severe-injury e-bike crashes, their hazard-perception skills are yet to be methodically examined. We aimed to explore and map e-bike riders’ development of hazard-perception abilities in perceiving different types of hazard instigators. It was hypothesized that the ability to identify hazard instigators prior to their materialisation (i.e., unmaterialised hazards) develops with age and experience. Method: Eighty-nine participants (inexperienced-youngsters, experienced-youngsters, inexperienced-adults and experienced-adults) took part in the experiment. Participants observed 10 short traffic-scenes clips taken from an e-bikes riders’ perspective and engaged in a hazard detection task. Results: Inexperienced-youngsters identified significantly less unmaterialised hazards than all the other groups; inexperienced-adults and experienced-youngsters identified approximately the same number of hazards; experienced-adults identified the most. Additionally, more verbal descriptions regarding unmaterialised hazards were suggested by experienced-adults than by all other groups. Findings suggest that with both age and experience, e-bikes riders’ hazard-perception performance tend to enhance. Moreover, participants' driving license status was found to play an important role in their performance. Conclusions: Understanding young, novice e-bike riders' shortcomings in evaluating traffic-situations contribute to the effort of producing intervention techniques that may increase their attentiveness towards unmaterialised hazards and lead towards reduction in their over-involvement in crashes. Implications for training, licensing and policy change recommendations are discussed.