Psy409 9/18/05

My First Outline of Assigned Readings

By Kristina Peltz

Defining Aggressive Driving Behaviors and Laws

Aggressive Driving is Emotionally Impaired Driving by Dr. Leon James & Dr. Diane Nahl—University of Hawaii at

www.aggressive.drivers.com/board/messages/25/47.html

Instructions for this activity are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/409a-g23-oral.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

I. Defining aggressive driving and impaired emotions

A. Aggressive driving is driving under the influence of impaired emotions, which results in behavior where your level of risk is imposed on others. There are three categories of impaired emotions

A. Impatience and inattentiveness

B. Power struggle

C. Recklessness and road rage

B. This is something that as drivers we see almost every day but probably don’t think of as “impaired emotions”

C. Opinion-Three categories is a good way to divide the types of emotions- severity depends on different categories

II. The three domains of driving behavior and norms

A. Chart

Type	Norms and improvement
Affective	Negative and anti-social examples Socio-cultural methods to reduce attractiveness of norms/increase attractiveness of cooperative norms
Cognitive	Inaccurate and inadequate examples Self-training and self-improvement for managing risk/regulating emotional behavior
Sensorimotor	Inadequate and immature examples Lifelong self-improvement exercises for competent driving habits

B. Everyday life: these norms are all often causes of accidents that we can relate to

C. 3 types seem like a good way to categorize domains of driving behavior, but how do we go about these improvements? Need for more research.

III. The language of aggressive driving laws

A. Laws on aggressive driving are difficult due to behavioral language

B. Culturally significant because states are currently trying to pass these bills

C. Opinion- disparity in definitions reflected in law