Organisation: Nottingham Trent University
Amount awarded
£98,604
Completed
2019
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre
5 August 2021
Summary
This research project set out to identify whether mindfulness training can have a positive effect on driving-related behaviours in the laboratory and the real-world.
It concluded that mindfulness training can have positive effects on a range of safety-related behaviours.
More detail
Mindfulness is a meditative mental state that is achieved through focusing attention on the current moment, coupled with a non-judgmental approach to current experiences. Academic research has identified benefits of mindfulness in a wide range of medical and behavioural contexts. Even higher-order cognitive skills can be improved, including sustained attention, concentration, attention span, executive function, and working memory capacity.
Previous studies have found that drivers who tend to be naturally more mindful tend to have lower engagement with distracting tasks while driving, reduced driving anger, lower risk, and increased safety behaviours.
Despite this positive relationship between naturally-occurring mindfulness and safety-related driving behaviours, there was no firm evidence that training drivers in mindfulness can evoke similar positive effects.
This research project aimed to fill that evidential gap, by identifying whether mindfulness training can have a positive effect on driving-related behaviours in the laboratory and the real-world across three studies.
Methodology
The project comprised three studies, the first of which assessed the impact of a 12-hour training course on a battery of laboratory tests. The second study replicated this method, but the course was rewritten to focus specifically on driving and fit within a condensed four-hour time window (following the format of UK speed awareness courses).
In study three, the same four-hour course was given to experienced drivers, however online-resources were also provided to support and encourage meditative practice in participants following the course.
The project adopted a randomised control trial methodology, with participants randomly allocated to either the experimental condition (mindfulness training) or to a control intervention (car-maintenance training). Great efforts were made to ensure that the control intervention appeared to be a viable training method, to mitigate the possibility of participants guessing the hypothesis and behaving accordingly.
Participant behaviour on a range of driving-related tests and questionnaires was measured before and after the training intervention, to assess whether the mindfulness-trained drivers displayed improved performance post-training.
Conclusions
Across the three studies, mindfulness training was found to have positive effects on a range of safety-related behaviours.
One of the particularly significant successes of this project was in reducing a full mindfulness intervention to a mere four hours, and demonstrating the on-road effects of mindfulness training. Given the resource limitations (full randomised control trials would typically cost much more) these findings are extremely pleasing.
More information
For more information and/or to download the full project report, visit the Road Safety Trust website:
https://www.roadsafetytrust.org.uk/funded-projects/19/nottingham-driver-awareness