**6. Conclusion**

it is a fact that highly skilled drivers, or those who believe they are, may be at greater risk due to their tendency to take risks on the road. In this chapter, we have delimitated the characteristics of a group of optimistic offender drivers, which reveal, on the hand, a great lack of understanding of the true impact that external factors can have on driving and; on the other hand, they tend to overestimate their abilities and overconfident in their ability to avoid accidents. In addition, these drivers do not usually experience negative emotions when they fail. All this, together is what increases the probability of suffering an accident. The consideration of the different cognitive profiles in the perception of the risk or challenge when facing potential traffic situations may provide the instructors on these courses with a better understanding of the true nature of those attending. It is not the same to draw attention to the limitations in terms of skills and capacity of someone who has a generally optimistic view of situations they perceive to be controllable, as to point out those limitations to someone with a generally pessimistic outlook regarding those self-same situations. The ability to restructure cognitive distortions and dismantle mistaken beliefs might be an important feature of courses of this kind, as well as in the instruction of new drivers. This should therefore be a priority to increase the effectiveness of driver rehabilitation courses following the withdrawal of points, and reduce the likelihood of a relapse, which would mean a further step forward in the prevention of road accidents.

**85**

**Author details**

training programs.

Germany

Carlos Hugo Criado del Valle1

*Cognitive Profile of Optimistic Offender Drivers Affected by Psychological Interventions…*

However, underlying cognitive functioning or driving exposure have not been widely studied. To this end, we suggest future research should utilize the advances in neuroscience methods and clinical tests with relevant technologies (like Eye tracking, Bio-Feedback and modern devices) which can understand neuroscience signals and driving behaviors and attitudes more accurately to study how the cognitive profile of drivers will be affected and how cognitive functions may relate to improved driving abilities and therefore, fewer motor vehicle crashes. Developing these lines of research will allow investigators to understand the mechanisms which underlie safer driving behaviors in order to ultimately inform prevention and driver

\* and Parichehr Scharifi2

2 Center for Technology and Society (ZTG), Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin,

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

1 Faculty of Psychology, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

\*Address all correspondence to: delvalle@usal.es

provided the original work is properly cited.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96249*
