Young novice drivers, driver education & training

By: Reima Lehtimki, Soila Judn-Tupakka, and Matti Tolvanen

Date: Tuesday, 08. July 2008

The current article is a critical review of the original, well-publicized document. The original reference is: Engstrm, I., Gregersen, N. P., Hernetkoski, K., Keskinen, E. Nyberg, A. 2003. Young novice drivers, driver education and training. Literature review. VTI rapport 491A, 2003.

The mass media often report that young novice drivers are involved in traffic accidents. Sometimes they hit a wall or run off the road, and sometimes a young life ends as the fatal result of the behaviour of the middle-aged. Traffic injury involving young drivers is a serious health problem. Driver training is an opportunity to influence traffic behaviour, and its improvement has become an important issue. The Swedish and Finnish project led by Nils Petter Gregersen has produced a review of the literature on young novice drivers and driver training , the other authors being Inger Engestrom, Kati Hernetkoski, Esko Keskinen, and Anders Nyberg. The authors have acquired information on driver behaviour and accident involvement during the years immediately following licensing, the methods of influencing the young, as well as the influence of driver training in the schools and the various licensing systems on traffic safety, producing a review based on 322 reports. The organisations concerned were the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute and the Psychology Department at the University of Turku in Finland. Swedish officials sponsored the project.

The searches for the review covered more than half a dozen databases, on the basis of the knowledge of the authors and their colleagues as well as via three reference programs. At least 20 of the key-words used in the searches produced data. Several reviews had previously been conducted on the question of driver training, which probably explains why this new review was mainly limited to literature published since 1995. About 1300 abstracts, which formed the basis of the reports for the review, were obtained.

The report

The report is divided into sections which handle the relation between the young novice drivers and the accidents, methods of influencing them, driver education in the high schools, and the influence of various licensing systems on the safety of new drivers, following which some conclusions are drawn.

The most striking conclusion is that young drivers are involved in accidents partly because of lack of knowledge, insight, risk awareness, and experience, and partly because of age-related factors such as lifestyle, peer groups, the socialisation process, and maturity. Experience gained under supervision and in safe circumstances reduces accident involvement after licensing. Supervision should however be well structured, since simply driving does not solve the problem of the years immediately following licensing. The authors also consider that the combination of lay and professional training may reduce this accident involvement. This claim is an appropriate framework for co-operation on such training, which will be the issue considered in continuing studies.

GDE matrix

The Goals of Driver Education model developed by Mika Hatakka, Esko Keskinen, and the other Finnish traffic psychologists (the GDE matrix), which forms the core of the review because of its comprehensiveness, focuses on route planning, evaluation of personal abilities, and risk awareness of drivers, among other things.

The literature review concentrated particularly on improvement of the Swedish licensing system. It proved essential to utilise the GDE model comprehensively. The authors regard harmony between the goals of the curriculum, educational content and design of the driver examination as fundamental to all educational actions. The following points have to be taken into account as the system is revamped:

• maintaining and improving lay training
• improving education according to the goals of the curriculum
• ensuring the competence of lay and professional instructors
• eliminating accidents during driving training
• directing lay instructors to anticipate danger and avoid it
• strengthening the role of professional training to support and organise lay training and to conduct training which lay instructors and students cannot undertake themselves.

Home training

A historic turning-point in attitudes towards driving training at home is apparent in the review. Driving training given by family members outside driving school has often been neglected (Lehtimki 2001). The trend has been that previous research findings have been tailored to support the argument forbidding lay training. Although no difference between driving school and lay training on the accident criterion was found in the research supporting the previous policy, lay training is nevertheless forbidden in several countries (e.g., Lauer 1960, Hatakka et al. 1996).

The literature review concedes that the option of lay training is capable of improvement (Engstrm et al. 2003). The home has its power, and graduated licensing systems based on the activity of parents are now favoured in America, the home of motoring, where accident prevention has improved (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety et al. 1999). The Swedish experience of lay training has also been good, and the review revealed more benefits than had been anticipated. Some psychosocial factors were observed in the review as well, revealing the importance of socialisation, which is a contemporary trend in driving training (see Lehtimki 2001, 2003). The reader may expect in this respect further insight, particularly into the actual relation of young drivers to traffic, in this review.

The review includes no consideration of the difference between the outcomes of lay and professional training, which is essential in terms of cultural learning. This can now be considered from the new standpoint of socialisation and enculturation. Enculturation means lifelong cultural internalisation (adoption) in which an individual learns cultural habits and values from older mediators. It is conceivable that driving school as social and organised tuition socialises its learners to observe the rules and regulations of society, teaching drivers how to act. Home tuition enculturates young individuals to live, be and behave in traffic over and above the regulations. The term enculturation can sometimes be used synonymously with socialisation, but the latter stresses how an individual grows into a member of society, while the former emphasises how he or she grows into a member of a culture and community and how he or she absorbs culture. Thus socialisation focuses on adaptation to society, while the culture is learned in enculturation. Socialisation without enculturation may involve the problem that the individual then misses out on his or her cultural heritage. (Judn-Tupakka 2003; cf. Jargon 1995, 52.) The same question arises if a central function of education is given over to punishment. In the extreme case it may happen that young people learn the written requirements of society in driving school but their driving culture from friends, while the training and practice given by parents in lay instruction can at its best transmit the more mature driving culture which is experienced and tested in everyday life.

Traffic psychology

The emphasis of the literature review is traffic psychology, which operates in a broader area than the mental activity, behaviour, and characteristics of an individual. Important concepts are used in the review without analysis. What is an accident? The moment of the collision, the process leading to it, damage caused or something else? Safety manifests itself in the review as the lack of accidents and lack of damage, but what is actual safety and does it really exist? The concept of risk should be defined to describe either an epistemological abstraction with importance in research, or the ontology of the real entities and processes between them, i.e., a risky situation. Life has always involved danger. In fact life used to be much more dangerous. As our knowledge increases, dangerous situations become risks we attempt to prevent in various ways.

The variables of the review, including the frequencies of various phenomena, velocity, blood alcohol, and kilometres driven, serve almost exclusively as orthodox explanations, the opportunity to comprehend people in their own terms having been missed through quantification, forcing the analysis into the classical mould, with the concomitant difficulty in fulfilling the statistical-mathematical presumptions and other rigid algorithms. This quantified and "hard-sounding" contribution is often based on the questionnaires and conceptions of answerers where the statistical-mathematical methods do not serve the qualitative data very well. The gigantic samples lose their importance, while even slight differences become significant when the sample size increases, and while the missing observations vitiate the opportunity to generalise. At the same time the importance of these matters to the people concerned is lost. Traffic is, however, interaction between people, where there must be confidence that all participants in traffic obey the rules relatively conscientiously. The statistics do not tell the whole truth. A correlation between two phenomena may exist but not be always causal. A correlation may, for instance, exist between the drop in alcohol prices and observed cases of drunk driving, but the number of offences reported may rather describe improvement in enforcement than the increase in drunk driving. Generalising about the accidents suffered by young people does not satisfy the statement that the "general" traffic morality has deteriorated so that every road user should be controlled by more totalitarian methods than before.

A positivistic view

The reader moreover misses the hermeneutically cumulative argument instead of research, which often sounds technocratic. For example, the worldwide phenomenographical approach developed at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (Phenomenography) had produced reports which offer insight into young drivers and which are conspicuous by their absence in the literature of the review (e.g., Dahlgren & Franke 1992, Franke 1995, and Lehtimki 2001). Even sociological research into reckless drivers is not included in the references (such as Vaaranen 1998 and 2004). The reader must conclude that the authors of the review have selected the reports from the positivistic viewpoint, that is, they were satisfied with research based on "objective" observation. Study design which originates with the presumptions of the researcher and not the personal reality of the young people does not capture the life-context of those studied. This is, however, the prerequisite for the assumption that the notions and behaviour of young people can be influenced.

Comprehension of the life-context and its meanings is, however, a prerequisite for what we could conceive as the why-questions and interpretations of meanings. (E.g., Uljens et al. 2003.) The statistics do not really help in encountering a human being, although even they are needed to underpin decision-making.

Goal matrices similar to the GDE model have strengthened the activity of practitioners, in which respect they are important. A scientist, however, misses explanation of learning and perceptual psychology of the content and goals. There seems to be some decline in this model, since the significance of the internal models and information process for traffic behaviour were attractively considered in the preceding hierarchy model (Mikkonen & Keskinen 1980). The literature review hardly touches conceptions of truth and the significance of the kind of knowledge. Tacit knowledge, for instance, has been found to influence skills like driving. Perception seems deliberately not to belong to that GDE model. Eye movement research reported as early as the nineteen-seventies that a driver spends as much as five years, learning to see (Lehtimki 1974). Does this explain the fact that young drivers are involved in so many accidents?

Tacit knowledge is considered to be developed according to physical activity. The handicraft skills, for instance, are based on this. People do not generally report it, although they could. Tacit knowledge clearly influences driving as well. It is known that book knowledge, which spreads rapidly, easily supersedes tacit knowledge--do the traffic rules also supersede real traffic safety? It might also to be expected that renewal of driver training which is rashly conducted could bring its own serious consequences in the form of loss of tacit knowledge. It is difficult to transmit tacit knowledge to someone else, but some of it can be realised in an apprenticeship in which the features of enculturation, among other things, can be found.

Various peoples have adopted car driving so that it is understood as a civil right which should be rapidly obtained. Car driving is not a civil right--any more than driving a locomotive--but the conceptions and tradition have made it impossible for politicians and officials to demand conditions under which driving a quickly-moving machine weighing at least a half a ton should be managed. The state can guarantee freedom of movement in other ways than lowering the requirements of car licensing. The literature review informs us that the researchers of various countries have originated with a "civil right". This has not been what the car itself requires, and car driving has not been compared with using other kinds of machines. Would any factory manager let persons who have been trained according to the methods of this literature review drive as dangerous and expensive a machine as a car?

References

Dahlgren, O. L. & Franke, A. 1992. Tankar om vgtrafiken. LiU-PEK-R-156. Universitet i Linkping, Institutionen fr pedagogik och psykologi. (Thoughts on road traffic.)

Engstrm, I., Gregersen, N. P., Hernetkoski, K., Keskinen, E. Nyberg, A. 2003. Young novice drivers, driver education and training. Literature review. VTI rapport 491A, 2003. SEK 250.

Franke, A. 1995. Trafikskoleelevers tnkande kring trafikkunskap. Institutionen fr pedagogik. Gteborgs universitet. Rapport nr 1995:05. (Driving school pupils' thinking about traffic knowledge.)

Hatakka, M., Keskinen, E. & Laapotti, S. 1996. Professional and Private Driver Training in Finland--Evaluation of Results. International Conference on Traffic and Transport Psychology. Handbook of paper and poster presentations in short version (a conference guide). Valencia May 22-25, 1996

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety & Highway Loss Data Institute 1999. Teenagers: Graduated Driver Licensing.

Judn-Tupakka, Soila. 2003. Kasvatusantropologia--tutkimuskohteena siirtymrituaalit, enkulturaatio ja kulttuuritransitio. Kasvatuksen yhteist--uupumista, hirint vai yhteisllist kasvua? Kasvatustieteen pivt Rovaniemell 21-22.11.2002. (Kasvatustiede ja vertaileva kasvatustiede.) (Educational anthropology--transitional rites, enculturation and cultural transition as research objectives. Educational communities--exhaustion, bullying or collective growth?)

Jargon 1995. Kultturiantropologian englanti-suomi oppisanasto. Toim. L. Aro (ent. /os. Manninen, O. Hallia, T.K. Hautala, M. Kumpulainen, J. Latvala, M. Laukkanen, M. Mkinen, I. Nurmi, T. Rovio & N. Sskilahti, Jyvskyln yliopiston ylioppilaskunta. Julkaisusarja n:ro 35. Jyvskyl. (English--Finnish learners vocabulary of cultural anthropology.)

Lauer, A. R. 1960. The Psychology of Driving. Factors of Traffic Enforcement. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

Lehtimki, R. 1974. Tienvarsimainosten vaikutus liikenneturvallisuuteen. Liikenneturvan tutkimuksia 28/1974. (The effect of roadside advertisements on traffic safety.)

Lehtimki, R. 2001. The Conceptions of Traffic Safety among Young Male Drivers. http://ethesis.helsinki.fi.

Lehtimki, R. 2003. Autonkuljettajan sosiaalistuminen liikenteeseen. Teoksessa: Mietola, R. & Outinen, H. (2004) Kulttuurit, erilaisuus ja kohtaamiset. Kasvatustieteen pivien 2003 julkaisu. Sivut 76 -82. ISBN 952-10-1621-3. (21.10.2004). (The socialisation of the car driver with traffic.)

Mikkonen, V. & Keskinen, E. 1980. Sisisten mallien teoria liikennekyttytymisest. General Psychology Monographs No B1. (The theory of the internal models concerning traffic behaviour.)

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Polanyi, M. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge & Kegan.

Siegrist, S. (ed.) 1999. Driver training, testing and licensing. GADGET, Work Package 3. Bfu report 40, Berne.

Uljens, Michael & Bengtsson, Jan. (red.) 2003. Livsvrdsfenomenologi och hermeneutik. Aktuella humanvetenskapliga forskningsproblem. Helsingfors Universitetet. Pedagogiska institutionen. Forskningsraport nro 192. (Life value phenomenology and hermeneutics. Actual human scientific research problems.)

Vaaranen, H. 1998. "Kun ratti lhtee ksist". Tutkielma autoilunuorten kaahailusta Etel-Suomessa 1990-luvulla. Oikeussosiologian pro gradu-tutkielma. Terveys ry. (As the steering wheel falls from the hands. A study of the reckless driving of young drivers.)

Vaaranen, H. 2004. Kaaharipoikia ja rappioromantiikkaa. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelun tutkimus- ja koulutuskeskuksen julkaisuja A30 (vitskirja). (Boys driving recklessly and depraved romanticism. A thesis.)

Related Links:

• Drivers.com article: Informal vs. formal traffic laws
• Drivers.com -- articles and links on Driving Instruction
• Drivers.com article: Can speeding be justified?

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