Easter has passed – the gateway to the summer as we head towards better weather and longer evenings.
Where I live on the south coast, it’s not just the warmer weather or longer days that tell me summer’s coming, it’s the increase in tourists. Drivers characterised by not knowing the area they are driving in and often behaving very unpredictably. Stopping without warning to read road signs, making sudden turns, changing lanes at short notice, and having no local knowledge of the well-known hazards that the locals are all too aware of.
However you don’t have to live near a holiday resort to encounter drivers who are unfamiliar with your local roads. All too often drivers who live or work in an area assume that everyone else around them has the local knowledge that you do. This can lead to assumptions that other road users will alter their driving accordingly, and that’s where accidents happen.
If you know that the morning sun always blinds you at the same time over the same brow of a hill, don’t assume that the driver in front is also aware. It may be the first time they have ever been on that road causing them to slam their brakes on if it catches them by surprise.
But how do you spot drivers who aren’t from your local vicinity? This is where hazard perception comes in, because there are often many clues that tell us.
- Rental cars with logos on the side or rear of the vehicle.
- Drivers that slow down to look at brown directional signs indicating places of interest.
- Cars with items on the back window shelf, or with a boot full of bags and luggage.
- Cars with roof racks, or bikes on the back.
- Caravans and campers
Passengers reading maps.
This is just a selection of examples, however it reinforces why hazard perception is so critical discipline when driving. Note I said hazard perception (not hazard avoidance) because this is the skill of perceiving a hazard before it becomes an actual hazard.
But how can you determine if your drivers have strong hazard perception skills or not? One option is to look at their accident history, and the reasons why accidents happened.
Another is to risk assess them, and a key section of our own driver profiling system assesses a driver’s ability to spot clues to hazards using a variety of road scenes.