Research: Cyclists make better drivers; Improvement on specific skills demonstrated by research study - ScienceDirect

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Article highlights:

• We compared attentional allocation between drivers and cyclists-drivers.

• Experimental task was to decide whether two alternating road scenes were identical or changed.

• Change involved either a bicyclist, pedestrian, car or road sign.

• Accuracy was similar between drivers and cyclist-drivers.

• Cyclist-drivers were faster at detecting changes, especially for changes involving cyclists and signs.

Abstract

Efficient processing of visual information is crucial to safe driving. Previous research has demonstrated that driving experience strongly affects attentional allocation, with large differences between novice and experienced drivers. Expanding on this, we explored the influence of non-driving experiences on attentional allocation by comparing drivers with and without cycling experience. Based on situation awareness field studies, we predicted cyclist-drivers would demonstrate superior performance.

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