Gaps, risks, and unwritten rules of the road: How road-user interactions differ across cultures

This project will investigate the cross-cultural differences in how drivers interact and communicate in the UK and Malaysia. We are constantly interacting and communicating with other drivers on the road. These interactions could be in the form of explicit communication such as using an indictor to signal turning, obeying "unwritten rules", deciding whether it is safe to cross a junction, or predicting the behaviour of somebody else on the road.

However, the way we interact and communicate on the road has the potential to vary greatly across countries, especially how we use "unwritten rules" to communicate with each other such as flashing our headlights.

Surprisingly, relatively little research has been conducted into the ways in which road users interact with one another in any context, although this is starting to change with the recognition that this knowledge is essential for developing automated vehicles (AVs) that are safe and trusted. However, so far studies have focused on a relatively small number of high-income Western countries.

This is problematic as 9 out of 10 of the world's road accidents happen in low-and-middle-income (LMIC) or non-western countries. Whether research findings translate from one setting to another is not known as until now no research has investigated how road user interactions compare between cultures.

This project aims to address this issue, by directly comparing interactions between road users from two countries with radically different accident and fatality rates: the UK and Malaysia. We will use a combination of driving in a simulator and structured observations on real roads in the two locations to explore the ways in which car drivers interact with other drivers and motorcyclists at road intersections, which are a key setting in which accidents and fatalities occur in both countries.

We will investigate drivers' propensity to engage in risky manoeuvres at junctions, their abilities to predict other road users' manoeuvres, and the impact of explicit communicative behaviours on these, such as using the indicator or honking the car horn.

Findings from the studies will provide insight into the universality or culture specificity of road user interactions. They will provide a steer as to whether road safety interventions may need to be culturally adapted to be effective in Malaysia or other LMICs facing similar road safety challenges. The results will inform the design of AVs, by showing what kinds of information guide drivers' interactions with other vehicles as well as the outcomes of such interactions.

If these differ cross-culturally then this would support the potential need for AVs to be modified depending on the cultural context in order for them to safely interact with, and be accepted by, human road users across the globe. The findings may also have implications for driving abroad, potentially highlighting a need for more information to be available about customary driving behaviour in other countries.