Young Driver Training and Socioeconomic Status: A Human-in-the-Loop Driving Simulator Evaluation

Previous research consistently shows that young drivers are poor at anticipating latent hazards on the roadway compared to more experienced drivers. The Road Awareness and Perception Training (RAPT) program is a driver training program that aims to accelerate young drivers’ learning of hazard anticipation (HA) skills. More recent research has started showing evidence that RAPT may be even more effective at reducing accidents for young drivers with a lower socioeconomic status (SES), though the direct impact of RAPT on HA skills in the driver population is yet unclear. The current experiment thus directly evaluated the effectiveness of RAPT on the HA performance of drivers differing in SES using a high-fidelity driving simulator. Fifty-two participants were randomly assigned to the active or passive RAPT training group. Participants in the active RAPT group completed the original RAPT-3 that provides them the opportunity to make and mitigate errors and master the skill (3M method) to anticipate HA via error-feedback mechanism. Participants in the passive RAPT group received the knowledge about latent HA identical to that of the active RAPT group without the 3M method. Participants drove a series of eight simulated HA scenarios in the virtual environment immediately before and after completing the respective training program. The results showed credible improvement of HA performance in the active but not in the passive RAPT group, indicating the error- feedback mechanism was crucial for their learning. Additionally, contrary to our expectation, regardless of their assigned training program, high-SES drivers demonstrated greater HA skills after completing either training program than before, while low-SES drivers did not. The results imply that high-SES drivers may employ a different learning mechanism than low-SES drivers to anticipate latent hazards better on the second encounter to the scenarios. The present work suggests that the error-feedback mechanism is essential for accelerating young drivers’ learning for road safety and that low-SES drivers may not benefit equally well even from the RAPT program. More research is urgent in better understanding and characterizing how SES and other related variables influence their learning from the available driver training programs.