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In this study, the novice driver behavior involved in traffic conflicts is investigated in order to obtain the cues of driver education program for avoiding traffic accidents. Following results are obtained that when the novice drivers encounter the oncoming vehicles, they fixate the vehicles at higher rate than the conflict objects and induce the traffic conflicts. In case of no oncoming vehicles, they also induce the conflicts because their strategies of visual search are critically concerned with the vehicle's direction of travel. They cause other traffic conflicts because it is difficult for them to maintain their vehicle on the correct lane position.

The skill acquisition process of novice drivers under conditions of steady-state cornering is compared with the visual and control performance of experienced drivers. After a short-term training session, the cornering speed of the novice drivers was close to that of the experienced drivers. The visual sampling strategies for the experienced drivers were critically concerned with the inside of the course. The novice drivers, however, tended to pay much attention to the outside of the course. In addition, the search and scan patterns for the novice and experienced drivers were different. It was found that the acquisition speed of visual sampling strategies was slower than that of vehicle handling for the novice drivers in the skill acquisition process.

Junior college students of the automotive course are required to get the credits of the automotive engineering in which vehicle performance is instructed. Since no Japanese colleges have test roads, vehicle performance closely related with the lecture of automotive engineering has not been experimented. This paper proposes the education methods in which CAI (computer aided instruction) materials are used. The CAI materials include two examples of the simulation of vehicle performance, the brake test and the power performance test. The instruction programs expand the theoretical equations and display the vehicle performance using the animation and graphics technique. The results show that the CAI materials are able to be substituted for test roads to study the vehicle performance tests.