The importance of the vehicle driver’s cognitive processes in shaping road safety

Abstract

The article addresses road traffic safety. The issue constitutes a contemporary and fundamental social problem. That is because over 1.3 million people die on roads annually globally, while in Poland alone about 3,000 people. The article aims to discuss the factors influencing road safety, emphasizing the human factor and its complexity. A hypothesis was made that the efficiency and nature of cognitive processes affect human activity during road traffic. The method of analyzing the subject literature and the available statistical data and the method of synthesis were used to verify the formulated hypothesis. The text presents the characteristics of the most important cognitive processes and attempts to analyze their significance for the proper functioning of the person driving the vehicle. It is an issue that requires particular emphasis in the process of building road safety. Scientific research and social practice indicate that a significant proportion of road accidents result from inappropriate reception of stimuli from the environment and storage, transformation, and use of information, i.e., broadly understood disorders of cognitive processes.