Are Parents and Learner Drivers Seeing the Same Road

Young drivers remain overrepresented in road crashes. In Queensland, Australia, minimum practice requirements in a graduated driver licensing program sees parents providing the most driving supervision. Parents are likely to be experienced drivers with effective situation awareness skills (SAS), however parents and learners – who do not have effective SAS – may not realize they are not ‘seeing the same road’ while they are practicing, with considerable safety and learning implications. The study investigated the SAS of learner drivers and parents. Learner-parent dyads (12) provided verbal commentary regarding ‘what they were looking at’ (insight into SAS) during viewing of a 15-minute segment of real-world driving footage projected in a cave-simulation environment. The SAS of learners and parents contained 24 shared concepts, with 6 unique concepts each; however parents uttered significantly more words during the verbal commentary. In addition, the concept network differed in structure, with learners focusing on complex but infrequent maneuvers such as merging, while parents had a greater focus on the road environment (e.g., traffic lights), the road context (e.g., left lane), and the location (e.g., behind) and behavior of other road users (e.g., crossing). The findings suggest that learners are aware of risks in their environment – the ‘perceiving’ component of SAS – however they appear less capable in ‘comprehending’ and ‘projecting’ these risks. Intervention which strengthens their comprehension and projection skills appear warranted, and support to scaffold parents as the main facilitator of SAS skills in the novice driver merits consideration.