Effects of driving experience and sensation-seeking on drivers’ adaptation to road environment complexity

• We examined drivers’ adaptation to urban road environment complexity.
• Increasing road complexity was associated with slower speeds and increased mental workload.
• Experienced drivers tended to adapt more than less experienced drivers.
• Low sensation-seekers (SS) tended to adapt more than high SS in terms of lane position and variability.
• These tendencies should be confirmed with research using larger sample sizes.

Theories of driving behaviour and behavioural adaptation aim to explain why and how drivers modify their behaviour according to changes in roadway conditions. Elements of a driver’s personality and their level of driving experience may be contributing factors to the likelihood and nature of behavioural adaptation to road environment complexity. The present driving simulator study examined the effects of driving experience and sensation-seeking on drivers’ adaptation to road environment complexity in urban areas. Three increasing levels of road environment complexity served as the experimental manipulation. Compared to drivers with between 1 and 5 years of licensed driving experience, drivers with 10 years or more experience displayed a greater degree of adaptation to increasingly complex urban environments in terms of reductions in speed. This enabled them to respond more quickly to a safety-relevant peripheral detection task (PDT) in the most complex road environment than a group of drivers with a moderate level (5–10 years) of driving experience. Although the effects of sensation-seeking were not consistent across measures, it may interact with level of road complexity in terms of changes in lane position and lane position variability. Collectively, results from this exploratory study suggest that driving experience and low sensation-seeking tendencies may be associated with an enhanced ability to appropriately assess the demands of the road environment. However, the assumed ability of drivers with 10 years or more experience to choose a more appropriate speed was only applicable in the most complex road environment.