Bad Driving Is Associated With Lower Awareness of Driving

Sanbonmatsu, David M.; Strayer, David L. · 2019 · ROSA P / Mountain-Plains Consortium

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the relationship between driving performance and self-awareness, specifically examining how monitoring one’s own driving behavior correlates with safety. Motivated by self-regulation theories suggesting that monitoring is essential for goal attainment, the authors hypothesized that good driving is associated with greater self-awareness of performance, while bad driving is linked to lower awareness. The research also explored whether emotional arousal diminishes this awareness and whether perceived task importance enhances it. The experiment involved 54 undergraduate participants who drove on a DriveSafety™ DS-600 simulator. Participants were randomly assigned to discuss either emotional topics (everyday worries) or daily routines during the drive. Driving errors were recorded via video coding and self-reporting. Indices of driving self-awareness were calculated based on the correspondence between actual errors and participants’ perceptions of their errors, safety, and performance. Participants also rated the importance, motivation, and effort they applied to driving safely. The results revealed a strong positive association between driving safety and self-awareness. Participants who made fewer driving errors demonstrated significantly higher awareness of their errors, safety, and overall performance. Conversely, those with poorer driving performance exhibited lower self-awareness. The study found that higher perceived importance of driving safely and greater effort exerted were associated with fewer errors and increased self-awareness. However, motivation alone was linked to fewer errors but not to greater self-awareness. Contrary to hypotheses, discussing emotional topics did not negatively impact driving performance or self-awareness compared to discussing routines; the emotional manipulation failed to induce significant differences in negative affect, leading researchers to disregard this variable in subsequent analyses. The findings indicate that lower driving self-awareness is inherently associated with bad driving. The authors conclude that monitoring one’s own state and performance is critical for safe operation, as it allows drivers to recognize discrepancies between their behavior and safety standards. The study suggests that driving education programs should emphasize the importance of self-monitoring, teaching developing drivers to actively track their alertness, emotions, and driving quality. This research supports previous experimental work showing that factors impairing performance, such as cell phone use, also diminish the awareness of that impairment, reinforcing the link between poor performance and reduced self-knowledge.

Key finding

Lower driving self-awareness is significantly associated with a higher number of serious driving errors.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 54

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• situational awareness
• mode awareness
• mind wandering
• decision making risk perception
• vigilance
• mci dementia driving

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence
• Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics
• Theoretical Contribution: theory or model