| Summary |
Chun-Pin Peng, 2006.07
Department of Transportation Technology and Management
National Chiao Tung University
Car driving almost becomes the essential living skills for modern people. The driving abilities of drivers relate closely to the safety of road users and the traffic order. The drivers are required to learn the ability of safe driving and become proficient in every technique that is needed for driving, in order to reduce the involvement of traffic accident. However, the driving schools only provide the learners with a safe and simple training environment which cannot reflect the real situations of road driving. Therefore, a significant proportion of legal drivers dare not drive their cars on the road even they have got their driver licenses for a while.
This study was conducted to explore the perceived driving abilities for those people who just got their permissions to drive a car. A questionnaire was designed to collect the new drivers’ perceived abilities to drive or maintain their cars. The Rasch model was then employed to estimate the difficulties of designed items as well as the perceived ability of each individual new driver. Furthermore, in order to observe the growth of perceived driving abilities over time for those interviewed new drivers, a follow-up survey was conducted three months after the first survey was undertaken.
The study results show that the perceived abilities for parking their cars increased, but the perceived abilities of using and maintaining their cars, controlling their cars, understanding the traffic laws, driving different road conditions, handling of sudden incidents, and perceiving the risk of driving all decreased after three months of road driving. It might be the case that the environment of roadway driving is more complicate than that in driving school and the new drivers need longer time to learn and get accustomed. Furthermore, the male new drivers were found to have higher perceived driving abilities than females and the senior new drivers have higher perceived driving ability than the young new drivers. The drivers who learn manual cars seem to have higher perceived driving ability than those who learns automatic cars. The new drivers with motorcycle driving licenses also found to have higher perceived driving abilities than those without motorcycle driving licenses. This study not only evaluates the safe driving ability of individual new drivers, but also analyzes and reviews the deficiencies of the driving education and training system. It provides references to revise the systems of driving education, training program, and driving test. |
