Tacit Driving Knowledge, Emotional Intelligence, Stressful Events and Accident Risk: Traffic Safety Implications

摘要

We developed two tacit driving knowledge scales to investigate whether safer drivers can more accurately assess risks associated with a variety of driving conditions including road hazards and the driver's internal or emotional state. The tests were administered with a battery of conventional cognitive tests, personality instruments and situational variables chosen to predict accident involvement. The correlations between the tacit driving knowledge measures and the accident criteria ranged up to .22 (p<.001), and compared favorably to correlations between the accident criteria and the conventional measures. Odds ratios for the tacit driving knowledge tests show that low and average scoring participants had 5 and 2.3 times as many at-fault accidents as high scoring individuals. The data also indicate that stress, fatigue and illness elevate accident risk. The analyses demonstrate the importance of emotional and tacit knowledge and provide specific recommendations to improve driver safety.