Driving choices and behaviours of young male drivers at strategic and tactical levels

Abstract

Understanding the common actions of risky drivers could be critical to developing effective countermeasures and improving public health. Pre-trip and on-trip choices might be critical parts behind young male drivers’ aberrant behaviours, which are the main causative driver actions. This study aims to investigate young male drivers’ choices and aberrant driving behaviours. 138 young male (age range 21–30), active drivers participated and completed the Adaptation of Advanced Decisions and Patterns of Travel Scale and the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire. The results indicate that tactical decisions are negatively related to aberrant driving behaviour. Younger drivers who make tactical decisions report fewer errors, lapses, and violations compared to others. The same analyses were conducted for strategic choices, and it is found that strategic choices are generally positively related to aberrant driving behaviours (young drivers with strategic choices report more errors and lapses). Interestingly, while tactical and strategic decisions and practices have mostly been studied for older drivers, the safety benefits of these types of decisions (primarily at the tactical level) may be higher for the younger driver population. Thus, the role of different types of driving decisions and possible disadvantages should be considered before encouraging drivers to adopt these types of strategies.

Keywords:

• Younger drivers
• tactical choices
• strategical choices
• aberrant driver behaviours

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.