Cognitive and Psychomotor Correlates of Hazard Perception Ability and Risky Driving

Deficits in specific cognitive and psychomotor capacities, such as attention, reaction time, memory, and hand-eye coordination ability are associated with increased crash risk, especially among older drivers (e.g., Anstey et al., 2005). Higher-order cognitive processes are also closely linked with hazard perception skills (e.g., Groeger, 2000). Employing a large professional driver sample, this study examines cognitive and psychomotor correlates of driver hazard perception detection accuracy (HPDA) and risky driving. Professional drivers (N = 2541) who applied to psycho-technical driver assessment centers were administered a number of computer-based measures of hazard perception, monotonous and selective attention, reasoning, visual pursuit, visual perception, hand-eye coordination, and reaction time. They also completed a self-reported measure of aberrant driver behaviors and reported the accidents involved and violation tickets taken in last three years. Results showed that attention capacity and psychomotor abilities were consistently associated with HPDA. Regression analyses revealed that selective attention, reasoning ability, and visual pursuit were moderately strong predictors of HPDA. These variables, however, weakly but significantly predicted the indicators of risky driving including aberrant driving behaviors, road traffic accidents, and violation tickets. These results suggest that hazard perception skills mediate the link between specific cognitive/perceptual skills and risky driving. The findings underscore the role of higher-order perceptual and cognitive processes, especially selective attention and reasoning, underlying hazard perception ability and have implications for driver assessment, training, and cognitive demands for driving.