Assessing the relationship between driving skill, driving behavior and driving aggressiveness

Aggressive driving is a common phenomenon with potential safety hazards. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the relationship among driving skill, driving behavior and driving aggressiveness. A questionnaire survey consisting of three subscales was conducted. Subscale 1 is about driving skill; Subscale 2 is associated with daily driving behavior, while Subscale 3 focuses on aggressive driving behaviors. A total of 239 licensed drivers completed the survey. The five-factor structure was extracted by factor analysis. Then, the correlation analysis method was used to explore the relationship between these factors and drivers’ demographic characteristics. K-means cluster was adopted to classify drivers’ driving aggressiveness into different levels using behavioral aggressiveness and emotional aggressiveness as the input features. Finally, an ordinal regression model for predicting drivers’ driving aggressiveness levels was established by driving skill factor, driving behavior factors and demographic information. The results indicated that more experienced drivers (i.e., drivers with older age, longer driving years or professional drivers) reported better driving behavior and less aggression. Male drivers were more aggressive than female drivers, especially on behavioral aggressiveness. In addition, drivers’ profession, driving years, penalty points, errors/lapses and violations can be used to predict their driving aggressiveness levels.