Traffic Tech #204: Matching Traffic Safety Strategies to Youth Characteristics |
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MATCHING TRAFFIC SAFETY STRATEGIES TO YOUTH CHARACTERISTICS
Youthful drivers are substantially overrepresented in motor vehicle crashes compared to all other age groups. One significant factor affecting the crash rate of young drivers is their propensity to engage in risky driving behaviors. Understanding these risk factors may help structure traffic safety programs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sponsored a literature review to document what is known about the cognitive development and information processing capabilities of youth. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute prepared Matching Traffic Safety Strategies to Youth Characteristics: A Literature Review of Cognitive Development. The report summarizes findings in the areas of memory, attention, learning, reasoning, motivation, risk perception, problem solving and decision making, social cognition, attitude formation and change, verbal ability, and moral development.
Memory
Long term memory stores our experiences and knowledge and its capacity seems to be unlimited. The main difference between children and adults is that adults, through education and experience, have more knowledge about the world and specific strategies for dealing with potentially dangerous situations. This specific knowledge allows adult drivers to more effectively solve problems and make decisions, assess the actual risk of certain behaviors, process the information in messages, predict the outcomes of their behaviors, and think about the consequences of their behaviors in a more global way than younger drivers.
Learning
Learning has been defined as any relatively permanent change in behavior or thinking that results from past experiences. Most traffic safety messages are designed to either change how people think about a traffic safety issue or change their safety behaviors. The report describes three relevant learning processes and their relationship to traffic safety programs.
Motivation
Motivation is the set of influences that account for the initiation, direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior. Since traffic safety messages and programs seek to change unsafe driving behaviors or enhance safe ones, understanding the motivations of young drivers will help structure programs that work.
One powerful motivator for young drivers is called sensation seeking, or the need of some people to increase their levels of arousal. The report describes the Sensation Seeking Scale that has been used to describe the relationship to unsafe driving behaviors. Males score higher than females, and scores on this self-report test typically increase with age, up until the late teens. High scores are also related to drinking and driving, speeding, non-use safety belts, and traffic violations.
Risk Perception
An unavoidable component of a person's life is risk and uncertainty. Our thoughts about these risks and how we assess them have been termed risk perception. Studies show that young drivers tend to perceive less risk in specific crash scenarios and general driving than do older drivers. They are poorer at identifying hazards when driving. Young drivers tend to see themselves as less likely to be in a crash than others in their own age group.
Young drivers also judge the risk of being in a crash as being greater when they are a passenger than when they are driving the vehicle, suggesting that perceived control is an important factor in their risk assessment. Young drivers who use safety belts tend to rate the risk of crash involvement as higher than those who are not using seat belts.
Several factors may be involved in the misperception of risk.
Attitude Formation and Change
Attitudes can be thought of as relatively stable mental positions held towards ideas, objects, or people. Because attitudes are learned, they are susceptible to change through persuasion. Persuasion involves three components: the source (or communicator), the message, and the audience. In general, communications will be more persuasive if they are perceived to come from a highly credible and respected source. Messages that seem contrary to what we would expect from particular sources are also perceived to be especially trustworthy. Similarities between the communicator and the audience that have nothing to do with the message also affect the level of persuasiveness.
Messages that are one-sided are more persuasive when audiences already favor the source's position. Messages that present both sides of an argument are more effective when audiences oppose the message. Messages that appeal to fear are generally effective only when the threat is severe, the likelihood of it occurring is high, and the audience is able to do something to prevent or eliminate it. This implies that appealing to a person's fear of a horrible crash because of high risk driving would not be particularly effective because young people do not perceive a high likelihood of being in a crash in the first place.
Persons who are highly motivated tend to pay more attention to the merits of the argument itself, while those with low motivation tend to focus on other parts of the message, such as source credibility or attractiveness.
This literature review will be useful for those who wish to have a better understanding of the development of young persons' cognitive abilities.
HOW TO ORDER
For a copy of Matching Traffic Safety Strategies to Youth Characteristics: A Literature Review of Cognitive Development, (123 pages), write to the Office of Research and Traffic Records, NHTSA, NTS-31, 400 Seventh Street, S.W., Washington, DC 20590, or send a fax to (202) 366-7096. Alan Block was the contract manager of this project, email: ablock@nhtsa.dot.gov
U.S. Department
of Transportation
National Highway
Traffic Safety
Administration
400 Seventh Street, S.W. NTS-31
Washington, DC 20590
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If you would like to receive a copy contact:
Linda Cosgrove, Ph.D., Editor, Evaluation Staff
Traffic Safety Programs
(202) 366-2759, fax (202) 366-7096
mailto:lcosgrove@nhtsa.dot.gov