Do cultural and pseudoneglect-related factors predict professional race-driving collision biases?

Abstract

Pseudoneglect is a phenomenon found in neurologically-typical individuals wherein more attention is paid to the left side of space than the right during visuospatial tasks. The leading hypothesis is that this attentional bias is due to the right hemisphere’s typical dominance in visuospatial tasks, which directs greater attention to the contralateral side of space. As a consequence of this leftward over-attendance, individuals tend to collide more often with objects on their right than their left during walking tasks. This rightward collision bias has also been found in some driving research. However, a majority of driving collision research has been done in culturally similar countries, and limited research has been done in naturalistic settings. As such, the goal of this study was to not only determine if pseudoneglect-related factors (age, gender, handedness) relate to driving collision biases in a professional and real-world setting but also to determine if cultural factors (reading direction and driving side) are predictive of collision biases. To do so, videos of Formula 1 driver collisions (N = 54) were examined for collision side, after which culture and demographic data on the at-fault driver were obtained. Formula 1 was specifically chosen due to its nature of a professional league with both international locations and drivers, with a variety of both left and right turns in its tracks. While not finding any factor to be a statistically significant predictor of collision side biases, we did find an interesting trend of drivers from left-side-driving countries having an overall rightward collision bias, while those from countries that drive on the right had a slight overall leftward bias. This trend supports previous research into rightward collision biases while also illustrating the need to expand collision research into a broader range of cultures.