Editorial: Factors Underpinning and Influencing Drivers' Aberrant Behaviors Across the Life Course

Human factors play a fundamental role in driving performance and in the errors and violations that can be committed behind the wheel. While new technologies will soon allow “automatic” driving, it continues to be crucial to analyse and understand the factors determining human error during driving. Errors, carelessness, and driving violations can be linked to age and experience, as well as to the driver's internal characteristics (e.g., personality, cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological processes). Such characteristics can be either stable, or variable, i.e., dependent on the state of the individual, and in turn, they interact with contextual aspects–that is, the social environment, such as the presence of passengers, or the physical environment, including the type of road, and the condition of the vehicle. Such characteristics and specific processes, as highlighted in this Research Topic, are peculiar to specific age groups, while others are more general and studied over the course of the lifespan. Given the complexity of the topic, it is not surprising that it is addressed in the scientific literature using diverse methodological approaches and measurement tools to account for these different dimensions. This Research Topic is intended to provide an overview of empirical studies referring to both internal and external factors related to driving performance and driving errors, and it is articulated in different age groups. The studies collected here address different issues and use different methodologies, providing an overview of the complexity and richness of this field.