Investigation of the relationship between motor vehicle driver violations, visual search, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and age of drivers

The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between visual search, some individual characteristics, and violations of vehicle drivers.

In this correlational study, 548 subjects aged 18 to 90 years, were selected by cluster sampling method. We used a questionnaire to assess the rate of driving violations and individual characteristics and CogLab software to measure visual search. Also, hyperactivity disorder in individuals was investigated through the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation, partial correlation and multivariate regression at a significance level of 0.05 and SPSS-20 software.

The results showed that there was no significant relationship between age some accidents and ADHD. There was a negative and significant relationship between age and self-reporting violations. Furthermore, a high index of ADHD positively related to self-reporting violations. In the following the results of correlation among the number of driving violations with visual search showed a negative and significant relationship among most of the variables. The results of linear regression showed that age negatively and number of accidents, ADHD, lack of conjunctive absent (number of distractors=4), and feature absent (number of distractors=64) positively can predict about 28% of driving violations variance.

As age increases, the amount of self-reported violations is reduced. The positive relationship between ADHD and the total number of accidents and self-reported violations indicates an inadequate ability to attention and focus, low control to conditions, and impulsive behaviors that could lead to this relationship. Also, with decreasing age, as well as the increasing people's visual search ability, the rate of self-reported violations increases.