The relationship between thinking and driving styles and their contribution to young driver road safety

This thesis explores the relationship between thinking and driving styles and their to young driver road safety. In doing so, it aspires to strengthen the focus on road safety of road unsafety. Although the majority of literature on traffic safety concentrates on crashes, risk, and aberrant driving behaviour, this research concentrates on people and safe driving. In other words, this study is undertaken from a positive point of view, and it presents and the first positive definition of road safety. drivers are overrepresented in traffic fatalities, and they have been at the centre of crash focused studies. However, although the number of young driver deaths has been in the past decade (Chen, Ivers, Martiniuk, Boufous, Senserrick, Woodward, Stevenson and 2010a), young drivers still represent 25% of the road related deaths, but make up only 15% the licensed drivers (Department of Infrastructure Transport Regional Development and Local 2009). It seems that past research, the majority of which is negatively focused on and aberrant driving behaviour, has not yet led to a satisfactory improvement of young road safety. This study, therefore, focuses on young drivers’ safety from a positive. methodology is used to find an answer to the main research question Can knowledge of and driving styles contribute to young driver road safety? , using self-report questionnaires and group with young drivers. The thesis examines the relationship between young drivers’ thinking driving styles, emphasising patient and careful driving. The traffic safety literature and the literature on thinking styles is used to get a better understanding of the construct of driving, and what driving style means to young drivers themselves. It argues that thinking and driving can both be regarded as intellectual styles and a model for the development of driving styles is. The findings from this research have implications for driver training content as well as for training execution.