Road accidents are mostly avoidable and young males seem to be the group most prone to adopt dangerous driving behavior. Many efforts have been made to specifically target this group using two different kinds of warning messages: social and physical warnings. The relative effectiveness of these warning messages has never been compared directly, and their direct effectiveness has never been assessed in a realistic driving simulator to observe possible immediate changes in behavior while driving. Fifty young Israeli drivers (27 women) performed a driving task in a life-size driving simulator before and after watching either a physical or a social warning message. We compared the subject's driving behavior in terms of collisions, speed excesses, and non-compliance with traffic lights before and after watching the warning videos. We show that physical and social warning messages both had an immediate positive influence on reckless driving behavior in a realistic driving scenario, and that viewing the social video had a greater impact on men than on women. Our results indicate that both kinds of warning messages are effective in immediately reducing reckless driving behavior, but that publicity campaigns targeting specifically young males would benefit from developing social warning messages.

道路交通事故大多是可以避免的，年轻男性似乎是最容易采取危险驾驶行为的群体。已经做出了许多努力来专门针对这一群体使用两种不同类型的警告信息：社会警告和身体警告。从未直接比较这些警告信息的相对有效性，也从未在现实驾驶模拟器中评估它们的直接有效性以观察行为的可能即时变化，同时驾驶。50 名以色列年轻司机（27 名女性）在观看物理或社交警告信息之前和之后，在真人大小的驾驶模拟器中执行了一项驾驶任务。在观看警告视频之前和之后，我们比较了受试者在碰撞、超速和不遵守交通信号灯方面的驾驶行为。我们表明，身体和社会警告信息都对现实驾驶场景中的鲁莽驾驶行为产生直接的积极影响，并且观看社交视频对男性的影响大于对女性的影响。我们的结果表明，两种警告信息都可以有效地立即减少鲁莽驾驶行为，但专门针对年轻男性的宣传活动将受益于制定社会警告信息。