An online driving training program crafted by researchers at The University of Queensland claims legitimate safety results like improved driving ability and less propensity for speeding
Researchers at The University of Queensland recently announced the development of an online driving training course with high hopes of helping rookie drivers to improve their driving ability and learn to reduce speed.
The study’s proponents, Professor Mark Horswill, Dr Andrew Hill, Dr Lisa Buckley, and Associate Professor Marcus Watson, created the course to teach drivers how to identify hazards right before they cause an accident. Although this is nothing new in the perspective of a traditional driving school Brisbane, the researchers insist that it can be enforced online.
The online driving course includes video clips of crashes and near misses on Australian roads. The clips are meant as examples from which the program introduces strategies on how to avoid them. They said that student drivers do not typically get these examples in a conventional driver training program.
The trainee gets the possible opportunity to learn from every crash, which the online course describes as unique. It is a promising deviation from the usual information that student drivers get from an experienced instructor. The rationale is that even if an instructor has decades of driving experience, the law on averages say that driver crashes only happen once per decade. Therefore, this modern setup of a driving school Brisbane will give the student more knowledge about crashes and how to avoid them through the examples.
The team performed a study with the help of the ACT Road Safety Fun to determine the effectiveness of its training course on real-world driving. Vehicles driven by rookie drivers were installed with dash cameras and GPS trackers to obtain driving data. The collection of data lasted for about 18 weeks. It only took four weeks of driving for half of the respondents to complete the course while doing weekly 30-minute sessions.
The respondents were provided access to the online training course after finishing the eight weeks of driving, but this time without the cameras and GPS trackers. It was noted that all participants in the study completed the hazard perception ability test. The group concluded that the respondents who underwent the training course showcased substantial changes to their on-road driving behaviour, especially in reduced speeding. The team considers it as a milestone in providing driving lessons to student drivers.
Furthermore, there was also a reduction in impaired driving habits, i.e., over-revving and a heavy foot on the brake pedal. The team announced a considerable improvement in the participants’ hazard perception ability, which translates to a defensive driving style.
Factoring all real-world scenarios, the team is confident that drivers who choose to learn through its online driving course will develop improved awareness, minor speeding, and better driving ability. All those attributes correspond to less likelihood of accidents.
