Psych 409a: November 19, 2006

Reduction in Traffic Accidents and Fatalities

By: Justin Koito

Instructions for this activity are found at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/g25-oral3.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

Peter Rothe, Editor (2002). Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer. (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press). Chapter 13: Revisiting Communications and Traffic Safety. Pages 193-210

Reduction in Traffic Accidents and Fatalities

I. Promoting Traffic Safety

A. Communicational Power of Driving: people feel empowered and a given right to drive a car

a) People express who they are through their cars

b) People communicate messages through cars

c) Driving is a responsibility

B. People, Business, and Government:

a) People: people follow other decisions besides business and trying to change a significant amount of people’s decision is near impossible

b) Business: need to pay attention to the people’s needs in order to make effective decisions

c) Government: make decisions from pressures of business and voters

d) Two types of drivers (those frequently in accidents and those that aren’t)

e) Need to find the demands for people to get support for any decision made so that decisions are moving positively

C. Ethics and Communications

a) Need to get people involved and looked at as an Other (a person)

b) The ethics of people need to be taken into account and not be so quick to judge that everyone is the same

c) People can be reached through campaigns, cartoons, history, and getting active in the communities

d) An objective that’s needed is to address people’s perception of reality about assessing their driving skills

D. The Active Viewer: people need to be able to voice their opinion and not only dictated to

a) common grounds need to be established between all parties in order to make things work

b) Drivers need to learn cooperation and not competitiveness

c) Need to reduce emotions while driving

E. High-risk Drivers

a) Suffers from excessive personal investment in driving

b) Believes that they will be able to avoid the crash and the rewards for the risk are superior compared to not participating in aggressive driving

c) Others are unable to assess the situation

F. General Drivers: normally good drivers

a) Suffer from lack of experience and knowledge

Related Links

1. Anger Free Driving: http://www.compassionpower.com/anger_free_driving.php - In this article, it talks about empowered drivers in a different way. Instead of speaking negatively of empowered drivers, the article says that empowered drivers are those who are aware of other people on the road and have control over themselves. The article goes on further to discuss how aggressive driving leads to family violence.

2. High Risk Drivers: http://www.4insurance.com/auto/highrisk.asp - In the article, the 4insurance website describes more of what a high risk driver is besides one who suffers from a self-centered personality. A high risk driver is one who has received many tickets and drive high risk vehicles. Although it seems that you are stuck with high insurance rates, the article says that you can lower your insurance rates by driving domestic vehicles and staying out of trouble.

3. Tips on Johannesburg Driving Ethics: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/7A177999-8912-4B8D-A328-81E402670278/ - I found this article to be entertaining when it described the ethics of driving in Johannesburg. In the article, it listed twenty-five tips on how to drive. It violates many of the driving ethics such as the first tip which states: “Turn signals will give away your next move - a real Johannesburg driver never uses them.” At first, I thought this was a joke, but at the bottom it says that these are the real tips for driving in Johannesburg. Johannesburg would be a good place to study road rage and aggressive driving.

My Home page:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2006/koito/koito-home.htm

Class Home Page:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/classhome-g25.htm