Risk Anticipation Isn’t Covered in Drivers’ Ed – UMass Amherst Researchers Collaborate with Toyota to Fill in the Gap

"This project was focused on developing training for teen drivers to accelerate some of the skills that they don't get when they're undergoing drivers' education and they learn over time," he continues. "If they're learning it over time, that means they're learning on the road, so it's risky."

The new learning module, Risk Anticipation Training to Enhance Novice Driving (Risk-ATTEND), tries to mitigate some of the most common ways that teens crash, which are intersections, rear-end situations and run-off-the-road scenarios.

"We ask students, 'when you look at this environment, where do you think a hazard might appear?'" explains Shannon Roberts, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst and co-PI on the research. Some of the scenarios in the training include mid-block crosswalks where there is no traffic light or stop sign, left-hand turns and cars or pedestrians obscured from view by trees or busses.

Risk-ATTEND is based on a well-established training paradigm for improving risk anticipation skills. "We took the original risk anticipation training - called RAPT-- which is two decades old, and we refreshed so it's relevant for today's teens," she says.

The researchers then tested the impacts of this training on driving behaviors with real teen drivers from the Pioneer Valley Driving School in Amherst in the UMass Amherst driving simulator. "Driving simulators are cool because you can drive and still be safe," says Pradhan. "It puts drivers in an environment where they feel like they're driving so we're able to elicit realistic driving behaviors."

"We wanted to see are teens looking where they're supposed to look?" says Roberts. "Our mentor, Don Fisher, former director of the UMass Human Performance Lab, has a saying: 'The eyes have it,' because where you look is where you think important information is or will appear" To measure this, the researchers used eye-tracking cameras in the driving simulator to see where drivers put their attention.

They found that, after training, drivers were more likely to look at places where hazards might appear. "This is less about slamming on the brakes or staying within your lane line, but more about how aware you are," says Pradhan. "If you are looking towards an area where there might be a potential risk, that's more than half the battle won-you're aware that something might be out there, and then, if something indeed suddenly appears, you are ready for it."

The next stage of research is tracking how this training translates in the real world. The researchers will follow the teens from the Pioneer Valley Driving School who took the training over time to see if they have fewer crashes, citations, or warnings than the average Massachusetts teen driver.