I am the Greatest Driver in the World! : -Does self-awareness of driving ability affect traffic safety behaviour?

Sammanfattning: This simulator study aims to investigate if there is a relationship between self-awareness of driving ability and traffic safety behaviour. Self-awareness in this study is accurate self-evaluation of one’s abilities. By letting 97 participants (55-75 years old) drive the simulator and answering the Driver Skill Inventory (DSI; Warner et al., 2013) as well as the Multidimensional locus of control (T-loc; Özkan & Lajunen, 2005). A measure of self-awareness was computed using the residuals from regression line. Furthermore, this measure could show if a participant over-estimated or under-estimated their ability. Four self-awareness measures were made. The self-awareness measures were compared to traffic safety behaviour. Three different traffic safety measures were computed using specific events in the simulator scenario. The self-awareness measures were grouped into three groups; under-estimators, good self-awareness and over-estimators. These groups were then compared to each other with respect to traffic safety. A multivariate ANOVA was made to test for differences between the self-awareness groups but no significant main difference was found. The results showed no difference in traffic safety behaviour given the different levels of self-awareness. Furthermore, this could be a result of the old age of the sample group as self-awareness may only be relevant in a learning context. The conclusion of the study is that the analysis shows that there is no difference between over-estimators and under-estimators of driving ability, at least not in experienced older drivers.