Quality in driving as a function of the interpretation of the context of action

Research highlights the multifaced nature of safe driving behaviors referring to individual factors, driving environment interaction, and social norms. This work focuses on a further factor: drivers’ interpretation of the context of driving. Aligned to the Semiotic Dimensional Model (SDM) highlighting the role of context interpretation in channeling behaviors, we tested the hypothesis that the lack of contextual information (uncertainty) induces drivers to an affective context interpretation, which decreases the quality of driving behavior. To this end, we designed a simulation paradigm to compare the quality of driving of participants exposed to a condition of lack of contextual information (N = 25) with a control group exposed to a condition of availability of contextual information (N = 25). Both conditions were induced through a prime. Standard deviations of telemetric data were gathered and subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis to obtain an index of driving quality. An ANCOVA tested the hypothesis, controlling the effect of vehicle velocity and workload. Consistently with the hypothesis, results demonstrated that the experimental group (No Contextual Information condition) showed lower quality in driving than the control group. Findings shed light on the importance of contextual information in regulating driving behavior, suggesting possible new strategies to promote drivers’ competence in driving.