Night driving and the situation awareness of learners and parents: Are they seeing the same road?

EXTENDED ABSTRACT: Young drivers remain overrepresented in road crashes, particularly in darkness. In Queensland minimum graduated driver licensing practice requirements sees parents providing the most supervision to meet the required 100 logbook hours, including a minimum of 10 night-time hours. This study compared the situation awareness of parents and learners as they provided a verbal commentary regarding ‘what they were looking at’ during a 15-minute segement of real-world driving footage projected in a cave-simulation environment. Despite some similarities, analyses revealed considerable differences in situation awareness, with implications for the safety and nature of driving during supervised (learner) and restricted (provisional) driving.