The effects of repetitive presentation of specific hazards on eye movements in hazard perception training, of experienced and young-inexperienced drivers

Recent evidence shows that compared to experienced drivers, young-inexperienced drivers are more likely to be involved in a crash mainly due to their poor hazard perception (HP) abilities. This skill develops with experience and may be developed through training. We assumed that as any other skill, HP developed through implicit learning. Nevertheless, current training methods, rely on deliberate learning where young-inexperienced drivers are instructed what hazards that they should seek and where they might be located. In this exploratory study, we investigated the effectiveness of a novel training procedure, in which learners were repeatedly exposed to target video clips of driving scenarios embedded within filler scenarios. Each of the target videos included scenarios of either a visible hazard, a hidden materialized hazard or hidden unmaterialized hazard. Twenty-three young-inexperienced drivers and 35 experienced drivers participated in training session followed by a learning transference testing session and 24 additional young-inexperienced drivers participated only in the transference testing session with no training, during which participants were shown novel hazards video clips. Participants responded by pressing a button when they identified a hazard. Eye movement was also tracked using fixations patterns as a proxy to evaluate HP performance. During training, young-inexperienced drivers gradually increased their focus on visible materialized hazards but exhibited no learning curve with respect to hidden hazards. During the learning transference session, both trained groups focused on hazards earlier compared to untrained drivers. These results imply that repetitive training may facilitate HP acquisition among young-inexperienced drivers. Patterns concerning experienced drivers are also discussed.