Driving Psychology (Psych 409a); September 11, 2006

Neuropsychology: Who are the RISKY Drivers?

By: Kasey Vanderhoof

Instructions for this activity are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/g25-oral1.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

Citation:

Peter Rothe, Editor (2002). Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer. (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press). Reviewing pages 10 to 34.

A) The Three Sub-Systems

a) The Health Sub-System

i) According to the World Health Organization (WHO) being healthy is a “complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of illness.”

ii) This sub-system demands inclusion in the cybernetic analysis of traffic because people’s health directly affects traffic due to the possible stressors due to not being healthy.

b) The Social Sub-System

i) Includes people such as family, peers, co-workers, organizations and institutions

ii) Influences drivers before, during, and after driver and other things such as biking or walking

c) The Cultural Sub-System

i) Although people driving are from diverse backgrounds, the social experience of driving is similar

ii) When people are driving they share similar backgrounds, experiences, needs, values and patterns of behavior.

B) The Neuropsychological Domain

a) Includes such functions as memory, attention, language, perception, planning and decision making, personality and social behavior

i) Focus’ on disorders of these functions

b) Driving is a complex cognitive task that places high demands on attention, Visio-spatial abilities, and information processing

i) This is why neuropsychology is an important aspect in driving

(1) Could answer the questions about a persons’ ability to drive

C) Neuropsychology and Screening Systems

a) The deciding of who can drive based on medical and psychological tests

b) The Elderly

i) Accidents and fatality rates are highest amongst this age group

(1) Thought to be due to age-associated illnesses that affect cognition, such as Alzheimer disease

(2) Dementia, in all stages, also affects a persons capability to drive

c) Current research finds that it may be useful to measure visual attention

i) Visual attention is the ability to select relevant information in the environment and inhibit irrelevant information

(1) May help in determining the safe from the unsafe drivers

(2) Best predictor of driving performance in people with age-associated illnesses

(3) A study showed that those who performed poorly on this test were 2.2 times more likely to be involved in a car crash during a three year follow-up period

d) Testing done concerning visual acuity and the visual field have not helped in predicting crashes

i) Older drivers are risky drivers due to inattention, improper turning and collisions at intersections whereas young drivers are risky drivers due to alcohol and drug use, fatigue and falling asleep, and speeding

D) An Improved Screening System

a) Is a person’s personality related to their driving style?

i) There is a positive relationship between sensation seeking and risky behavior

(1) People with a higher disposition to sensation-seeking have different levels of norepinephrine and dopamine that those individuals with a low disposition to sensation-seeking

b) They also want to be able to administer assessment on people who would like to continue driving after suffering from an acute disease, for instance stroke patients

i) People who are recovering from a stroke have problems with visual spatial tasks due to lesion in the right cerebral hemisphere

ii) They also have problems with visual perception which may be the way we came up with the phrase “looking without seeing”

(1) Drivers see with their brains which is why looking without seeing or driving without paying close attention to the task at hand is a common contributory factor to vehicle crashes

iii) For these reasons, neuropsychological research is needed in deciding who has a higher than acceptable crash risk after a stroke has occurred

(1) This may be possible with valid testing methods backed by scientific support

E) Supporting Fallible Human Behavior

a) Sleepiness, due to sleep disorders and lack of sleep, may cause crashes due to inattention and it impairs performance

i) Reduced reaction time, vigilance, and it affects information processing

ii) It is a huge problem and alerting devices, such as the rumble strips, have been created to keep people on the road

(1) They have reduced crashed due to driving off the road by 40%

b) Handedness

i) Left handed people

(1) Twice as likely to have car crashes and nearly four times as likely to die in a car crash

(a) May be due to the theory that startled left handed people with both hands on the steering wheel tend to swerve left, into on coming traffic

F) There are 15 widely known aspects of driving that act as stressors

a) Immobility: being stuck inside of the car, unable to move you body

b) Constriction: cars are supposed to stay in certain lanes and on certain sides of the road/highway

c) Regulation: there are laws that need to be followed

d) Lack of Control: you cannot control the flow of traffic

e) Being put in Danger: having many close call accidents that may hurt you or make your car less valuable (e.g. a scratch in the paint)

f) Territoriality: people consider their car to be like their home and the space around the car to be like the yard around their home, or their territory, so when people get close to them, a person may become hostile

g) Diversity: there are many different types of people who drive on the road who vary in experience, knowledge, ability, style and purpose for being on the road

h) Multi-Tasking: doing multiple things at once (e.g. driving and eating, listening to music, talking on the phone, etc.)

i) Denying our Mistakes: to deny we did something wrong when the blame is put on us either by our passengers or by other drivers

j) Cynicism: we are constantly told how to drive and sometime criticized for our mistakes which is likely to promote an active and negative life behind the wheel

k) Loss of Objectivity: unable to admit that you are at fault because of the automatic habits we partake in when driving, always accusing the other driver when in an accident

l) Venting: when you vent your anger it often make you more upset and stressed out

m) Unpredictability: you never know how the other drivers on the road are going to act or what their next move is

n) Ambiguity: there is no formal language when driving. This can become frustrating because when people make a mistake they may want to say sorry but have no formal way of doing so.

o) Lack of Emotional Intelligence: no one taught drivers sound judgment and emotional self control which may reduce stress

G) Road Rage and Aggressive Driving

a) The road is becoming a more hostile and dangerous environment

b) Aggressive initiatives

i) Law enforcements fight against aggressive driving

ii) There are activist groups in the media and on the World Wide Web who are fighting against aggressive driving

iii) It seems as if aggressive driving is actually a cultural norm and not a deviant behavior

(1) Children learn hostile driving techniques simply by being a passenger in a car

iv) Men are more aggressive drivers that women

(1) Women, as a population, are slowly becoming just as aggressive drivers as men

(a) It may be due to the fact that more women are beginning to drive

H) Why hasn’t Intervention Worked?

a) Although there are better roads, cars, and services available to help in the stressful activity of driving, people use these new and improved conditions to be more aggressive. For example, when there and straighter roads people tend to drive even faster.

I) Driving Psychology

a) Life long driver self improvement is needed to have more competent drivers

i) Driving is an automatic habit which improves with experience

b) QDC (Quality Driving Circles)

i) An informal group whose function is to exert a long term or permanent socio-moral influence on the driving quality of its members

c) Driving psychology refers to the knowledge that drivers need to accumulate throughout their careers as drivers

d) Driving psychology is the study of social-psychological forces that act upon drivers

Related Links:

1) Principles of Driving Psychology: http://www.drdriving.org

a. I chose this website because it gives an overview of driving psychology and what it is about. I thought that this website would be a great website to have up on my web page because of this fact. This website contains a lot of useful information about many things to do with driving and people.

2) How to Handle Stress Caused by Driving: http://phobiafreeway.com/skills.html

a. I chose this website because it teaches useful techniques on how to reduce stress. I also gives you a list of things that may signal that you are stressed. It lists physical, psychological, and behavioral signals. This website talks about things to do with driving psychology.

3) Aggressive Driving: http://www.aaafoundation.org

a. This website give you statistics on injuries that were caused by aggressive driving. It explains what aggressive driving is and which type of people may be labeled as an aggressive driver or if there is even a specific type of person who is likely to become an aggressive driver. It also assesses the drivers education programs.

My homepage: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409af2006/vanderhoof/vanderhoof-home.htm

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