关键词: 公交驾驶员, 危险类型, 反应时, 危险知觉, 驾驶风格

Abstract: Statistics shows that more than 80% of traffic accidents are caused by the driver’s own driving ability. Among the many driving abilities, hazard perception is closely related to traffic accidents. Hazard perception refers to the ability of the driver to detect potential hazards in advance, assess the risk level of hazards, and decide whether a respond is needed. Numerous studies have found that experience-related advantage in hazard detection and response. Furthermore, driver’s response time to the hazards varied with hazard types. For example, compared with experienced drivers, novice drivers have shorter response times to overt hazards than covert hazards. However, previous studies mainly focused on private car drivers’ hazard perception ability, no studies revealed the characteristics of bus drivers’ hazard perception under different hazard types. On the other hand, driving style may also affect the driver’s ability to search and detect road hazards. However, previous studies neither examined the potential impact of driving style on hazard perception nor controlled driving style when conducting researches on hazard perception. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of hazard types on Chinese bus drivers’ hazard perception by manipulating the visibility of hazards in the test clips and controlling the driving style. A 2×2 mixed experiment design was employed with traffic violations (accidents) as the between-group factor and hazard types as the within-group factor. One hundred and forty bus drivers (42 drivers with traffic violations and 98 bus drivers without traffic violations) agreed to participate in this study and completed a demographic questionnaire, Chinese version of the Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory Scale and a validated hazard perception test. The hazard perception test required the participants to quickly press the button to respond after identifying a hazard in each video clip. Eighteen video clips of real traffic situations were used in the present study, two of which were practice video clips, and the other sixteen were formal test video clips. The hazards in the video clips were classified into covert hazards and overt hazards according to the visibility of the hazards. The results showed that the response time of drivers without traffic violations to covert and overt hazards was shorter than that of drivers with traffic violations. The response time of two driver groups to overt hazards was shorter than that of covert hazards. Similar pattern in response time was also found in bus drivers with and without traffic accidents. Furthermore, after controlling driving style, the difference in response time between drivers with and without traffic violations (accidents) still existed, but the effect of the hazard type was no longer significant. The present study was the first to investigate the characteristics of Chinese bus drivers’ hazard perception. This study not only revealed the influences of hazard type on hazard perception of bus drivers with or without traffic violations/accidents, but also preliminarily confirmed that driving style had a potential impact on drivers’ response to hazards. These findings provided a new theoretical framework for explaining “why bus drivers take a long time to respond to certain types of hazards”, which was of great significance for the development of interventions for bus drivers who were prone to traffic violations or accidents in China.

Key words: bus drivers, hazard type, response time, hazard perception, driving style