Report 2:
My Understanding of Driving Psychology
By Jarrett Razon
Instructions for this report are at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy21/409a-g21-report2.htm
Question 3:
Discuss these two Web sites: drivers.com
vs. drdriving.org What are their main
differences? Be sure to consider at least these areas: articles, newsletters,
letters, style, probable audience, public relations or policy, advertising,
size, ranking.
The first main difference that I
found while visiting the two sites was the appearance of the two sites. Drivers.com is a professionally built website
that looks as if the people, who built the site, build websites for a
profession whereas drdriving.com does not look as professional and does not use
the latest technological tools on their website site as drivers.com does. Another difference that I observed is that
drivers.com also gives information about computer drivers and also it solicits
other websites on driving and computers, road side service, AAA and
drdriving.com is more focused on articles and the publications of their own
work and others. Drdriving.com is a more
informative website with straight forward facts and statistics. Both of the sites offer similar information
and topics. The two websites present
their work in a different style however the main message that is being
attempted to get across is the same.
Both of the websites have an archive
of articles and they are up-to-date on some of them. Drivers.com has articles ranging from teen
driving to refinancing automobile loans where drdriving.com has more personal
articles from psychology and driving to a chart of your driving
personality. Both of the sites have
links to many more articles not only in their own collection but on other
websites or books and magazines. The
letters appear more on drdriving.com’s site maybe because he is a professor and
other colleagues of his praise him more than drivers.com where the site is less
personal and more impersonal. There is a
lot more work by others and a variety of publications by other people. The newsletter part is done by drivers.com
where they post a new newsletter once a month. I think that this is good
because members or even non-members can read the latest advancements made in
traffic safety or any new ideas and concepts that are being researched by
experts. The style of the websites
differ in a way that drivers.com seems to target a larger and general audience
as a whole. This website offers various
self-improvement articles and reviews on driving but in general it has a more
“as-a-whole” aspect to it. Drdriving.com
targets the individual and what they can do to improve their own driving
personality. The audience target will
influence the style of each website.
However both websites offer professional advice and provide up-to-date
materials and information regardless of the style of the two.
On advertising, drivers.com does
more the triple the amount of advertising on their site than does drdriving.com
does. Drivers.com is a more general site
and not so much straight forward facts and statistics on driving. They have their own store that they advertise
for and also have job offering sites for truckers! Drdriving.com does not have so many
advertising; the obvious one is for amazon.com where they are selling his
book. Drdriving.com’s
website does not advertise a whole lot and rather focuses and presents on his
work and of his colleagues. The size of
the two websites is obvious; drivers.com is a lot bigger website than
drdriving.com is and probably spends more and has spent more than drdriving.com
has to establish the site and to maintain it.
Drivers.com even has a sister website where it offers invaluable help on
computer drivers and how they work and what you can do to improve your own, so
of course it will be a bigger website.
Both of the website has a high ranking by other sites and other colleagues.
These books are great tools to have
and use to gain a better perspective and grasp a larger piece of knowledge to
driving. After reading most of the
articles in the two books, it allowed me to be more open minded when on the
road. It challenged me to recall some of
the accidents in the book that lead to devastating tragedies and not to do them
myself when I am on the road. It also
challenged me to try to change my driving personality to become a more supportive
driver and to have less road rage.
Question 8:
Search the Web and the
As
humans we tackle various events and activities everyday in our lives that are
essential to our survival. Some
activities require less caution and risk such as taking the elevator to the 23rd
floor to work, while others such as driving an automobile through heavy morning
rush hour traffic requires all of our attention 100% of the time we are behind
the wheel or performing that activity.
Everyday we face what is called Risk Homeostasis maintains that, in any activity, people accept a certain level of
subjectively estimated risk to their health, safety, and other things they
value, in exchange for the benefits they hope to receive from that activity
(transportation, work, eating, drinking, drug use, recreation, romance, sports
or whatever)." This pertains to
the question “Do drivers have a preferred or usual level of risk?” The answer is we accept the level of risk for
each activity that we do even if the level of risk is high and endangers our
lives and the lives of others.
The question why do drivers take more risk when better
safety features are added to the automobile cannot be completely answered with
a yes or no question. Not ALL drivers
take these risks while they drive and these drivers actually appreciate the
better improvements car corporations are coming up with year after year. The drivers that do take more risks when
better added features for safety are implemented are dealing with a theory
called target risk. As more safety
features and straighter and wider roads are being built and conjured up, the
target risk gets higher. Humans push the
envelope as far as they can with the latest safety features. We strive to be the fastest, the strongest,
the first, but along with all these human natures, the risk gets higher and is
positively correlated with it. This is
apparent not only in driving but everything.
For example to be the strongest, one cannot be pure natural meaning they
don’t take supplements or steroids.
Without those things one is not able to compete with those who do. These supplements and steroids allow them to
work out longer and repair their muscle tissue faster, which will give them the
advantage over the all natural person.
However, the supplements are very harmful to a person’s health. The side effects of the drugs can be fatal
but they are still willing to take the risk.
In driving, roads are straightened out so sharp turns and curves are
avoided to lessen the risk but this is not true. The target risk is higher because people now
will speed because there is no curve.
Some things that may boost the target risk and the behavior of driving
are the safety features on cars, road conditions being more comfortable and
accessible for drivers, and better insurance premiums.
Driver personalities and taking risks while driving is not
as strongly associated as we might think that they are because driving
personalities are not consistent from one situation to another situation. A driver’s personality is not consistent with
the accidents on different situations.
The driver could be driving one way during one occasion and have another
personality on another. If a person
believes otherwise it may be examples of a psychological theory called the
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) used by social psychologist to refer to
people that attribute another person's behavior to that person's lasting
character and not often enough to that person's passing state or the prevailing
environmental condition. We cannot
highly correlate the two together because there is little stability in accident
involvement. There are many events that
happened on certain occasions that didn’t happen on other occasions that may
have contributed to the accident.
Risk is integrated in accident analysis by being looked at
the amounts of risk taken before the accident occurred as well as the driving
conditions if they are risky and if they could have help cause the accident to
occur. The legislation has attempted to
lower the risk of driving by mandating safety traffic laws of seatbelts, speed,
fixing the road conditions, and other various safety attempts. If drivers fail to abide by these rules, they
are fined and prosecuted in court. All
of these intervention attempts are attempts to lower the risk it takes while
driving. In some states it is now
mandatory for a person to take a driver education course before they receive
their drivers license. By doing this, it
forces new drivers to become more aware of the new laws and gain a broader
perspective on driving. They have the
opportunity to learn more about driving than a driver who has not taken a
driver education course.
Question 2:
Give a brief review of our two textbooks: Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving (James and Nahl), and Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make
Traffic Safer (Peter Rothe, Editor). The reviews should be between 3 and 6
paragraphs for each text. Select one Chapter from each text and give a summary
of it. Discuss in what way these ideas will contribute to society's driving
problems
Road Rage and Aggressive Driving
This book helps you to better understand your driving self
and show how to change highway stress, fear, anger, and assault into enjoyable
time on the road. This book offers a different approach - linking checklists
and exercises to explanations of specific emotions and behaviors so you can
understand your particular driving attitudes and actions. There are many
practical suggestions for avoiding road rage and transforming your driving
experience, all supported by real-life examples and scholarly research. This book deals with many different
situations and examples and from many different perspectives on each situation
on how different driving personalities would act and respond.
This book probably offers all the negative thoughts an
aggressive driver would have in traffic and categorizes where each thought
comes from. The authors brilliantly use
their expertise in the psychology field and offers invaluable information on
road rage and aggressive driving that could possibly be the answer to all the
traffic fatalities and accidents due to road rage. The book also offers readers suggestions on
how to possibly educate the children to the elderly drivers. A lot of ideas in this book are from personal
experiences of the authors and their own family experiences and is filled with
passionate work.
This book has the opportunity to resonate readers who have
been threatened on the road, trapped in a car with an irrational driver, or who
want to shake off learned habits of driver aggression. It gives us a peek at
the distorted reasoning behind driver aggression, as well as larger
implications for our auto-centered culture. It is a fascinating, accessible,
and well-documented look at the rapid and sometimes bizarre evolution of our
experience on the road.
In this book I think that the chapter on Dealing with
Stress, Aggression and Pressure in the Vehicle.
The main part of this chapter that I will discuss is the part on Driving
Psychology. I think that this part is
important because it explains what a driver experiences while they are driving
either in an aggressive state or a calm or non-aggressive state. If drivers are aware of the driving
psychology they could attempt to change their own behavior because they may
know why they are behaving the way that they are. Driving psychology has three parts to it: 1.
Driving is a complex behavior acting together as cultural norms 2. Driving norms
exist in three domains: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor 3. Driving norms
are transmitted by parents, other adults, books, movies and television. These three domains act together as one to
influence the way society drives. If we
can change what influences the behavior to something more positive and less of
the way that it is now, maybe society will slowly change and shape their
behavior to a more positive side.
Driving Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make Traffic Safer
This book has three parts to it cybernetics, institutional
systems, and the third part is the technical aspect to driving. It is a collection of various authors
contributing to making traffic safer by providing readers with their expertise
in mental and physical health, and social and cultural analysis of traffic
safety. Chapters in this section cover
different psychological aspects on driving such as cognitive and behavioral.
Chapters in section
two cover institutional systems, the law, the economy, the media,
and education. Among the topics is the conflict of traffic safety
and business economics, one of the several aspects of road safety
that are not usually included in academic journals. Voluntary
organizations and their influence on the traffic related court
system are also included.
In the third section, on technical
aspects of driving, some interesting questions are asked. For
example, if we know so much and if we have the technology to control
some unsafe aspects of driving, why is driving not safer? The fact
is that no-one drives perfectly all of the time, so that perhaps the
aim is to cater for the imperfect driver, so that our mistakes are
not necessarily fatalities.
The chapter in this book that I will
discuss is chapter 7 Driving Identities over a Lifespan. I believe that this is important because
developing a personal driving identity starts before a person even is legal to
obtain a drivers license. It starts from
when they are riding in the car with their families or whoever it is they ride
with. They are exposed to the driver’s
identity and driving personality and feeds off of it. They then obtain their drivers license and
react the same way that the person they fed off from. If they are aware that it starts at such an
early age, maybe they can develop good and less aggressive identities from an
early age. Developing an identity does
not end as soon as a person gets their license, but is a life-long process that
takes maturation. All the driving
experiences, the media, the culture and society that we are in will shape driving
identities over a life time. Society
places drivers based on their age into certain driving identities along with
stereotypes of these drivers.
Question 1:
Consider Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the Lecture Notes, in the Section
on Driving Psychology Theory and Charts at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy21/409a-g21-lecture-notes.htm#Charts
Consult the article from which the Tables were taken. Using your own words,
describe the three behavioral domains and levels of a driver (nine cells).
Illustrate each domain with your own driving behavior skills and errors, or
that of another driver you know well, or a driver in a particular movie. Make
up a "driving personality makeover" plan for yourself (or another
driver you know well). Discuss the problems you anticipate in carrying out such
a plan successfully
The affective domain pertains to the
driver’s feelings and attitudes while they drive. It’s how the driver
approaches the situation before even thinking about it. The cognitive domain pertains to the
attribution part of driving. This domain
is what the driver is thinking or emotionally feeling while they are driving. An example would be when a driver attributes
another driver’s behavior after they have behaved in a way that made them
attribute the situation. The
sensorimotor domain to driving, is the physical part
to driving, the turning of the wheel, and pressing foot on the accelerator and
so on.
There are nine (9) levels of the
driver that pertain to the three behavioral domains. Along with the three domains there are three
zones of driving which are responsibility, safety, and proficiency. The affective responsibility part deals with
the moral responsibility of the driver for instance not being harmful to others
while they are driving. The cognitive
responsibility part is having a good mental health and driving in a way that
shows that the driver is capable of driving well and has a good head on their
shoulders. The sensorimotor
responsibility deals with either the enjoyment or stress of driving. The next zone which is safety also has the
three behavioral domains. The affective
part is the type of driving that the driver is practicing either defensive or
supportive. The cognitive part pertains
to the type of attributions that the driver is making while driving of other
drivers and the sensorimotor part is the type of exchanges that are being made
whether positive or negative. The last
zone is proficiency. The affective part
is the driver’s part to be a law abiding driver to the safety regulations set
forth. The cognitive is the correct
knowledge of the road and laws. The
sensorimotor is the right actions and motions of the driver.
These zones and levels are helpful
to know or to have a slight knowledge on because it can help you to become a
better driver by being able to stay calm and be rational in tense situations on
the road that may flare up emotions leading to road rage accidents. For example a road rage accident could be
avoided if, at first there is a driver driving slow in the left lane, at the
affective level, the driver could not get upset and can let it go because at
the cognitive level, the driver is not making false attributions of why the
drier is driving slow in the left lane.
Finally at the sensorimotor level the driver won’t be swearing at the
slow driver or flicking them off. If the
driver following the slow driver in the left lane did not have a slight grasp
of knowledge on these levels and the driver gets road rage easily, at the
affective level the driver can get pissed off and real angry wanting to
retaliate. At the cognitive level the
drier could be thinking “This person is doing this on purpose and wants to play
tricks and games with me, I’ll show him!”
In turn his actions or at the sensorimotor level, the driver may cuss
the driver out, cut in front of the other driver, and even make the other
driver pull of the side of the road and unleash his road rage. So by knowing or being
aware that you can calm your self down at these levels, can be beneficial to
all drivers out there on the road.
My makeover would look like this:
|
Affective
Level |
Cognitive
Level |
Sensorimotor
Level |
·
Not getting angry over small things ·
Praise other drivers in my mind instead of putting them down |
·
Not attributing slow drivers as their faults ·
Have more positive attributions ·
Analyze other driver’s behaviors objectively |
·
No swearing at other drivers ·
No
flicking other drivers off if they are going too slow ·
Not
speeding |
I think that there would be problems
trying to practice this makeover for myself because for me, driving is
something that everyone should be on the same page as everybody else. It is aggravating when I drive and I see
other drivers do dumb things. It is
unsafe and dangerous. I remember in
class when Dr. James said that we have to first acknowledge, witness and then
modify our behavior. I tried that and
yes I did acknowledge that I got mad too often at certain behavior on the road,
and then I witnessed myself getting mad, and I still don’t modify my
behavior. If someone is to change, they
have to want to change, if not, change will not happen.
Question 7:
Our textbook Road Rage and Aggressive Driving has exercises in
several chapters. Do the following four exercises: (a) Exercise on scenario
analysis on p. 205; (b) Exercise on acting as-if on p.128; (c) Exercise on
self-assessment on p. 134; and (d) Checklist of your road rage tendency on p.
40. What were your reactions to the exercises? Discuss how these exercises help
you to become more aware of yourself as a driver. Do some of the exercises with
another driver you know. How do they help you understand some principles of
driving psychology?
After completing the exercises and
the class I have realized that there is so much more to driving than people
think. Some on the other hand may not
agree that there is a lot to driving but if they knew that every year in the
The first exercise was reading a
“Dear Dr. Driving” letter. The letter
tells a story of how a joke turns into a life and death situation on the
road. The driver was only sixteen years
old and was trying to find a party with his friend. They both drove and soon became lost. They encountered an irritated driver in an
SUV that raced passed them. They caught
up to him at a stoplight. They then got
ahead of the irritated driver and proceeded to block the highway by taking up
both of the lanes. The irritated driver
then pointed a gun at the two teenagers and chased them. In the exercise we had to evaluate the
situation and pretty much do an accident analysis and find safer alternatives
to the situation. The suggestions I had
were maybe they could have left in the afternoon. By leaving in the afternoon, they could have
avoided the driver for one, and the other they would be able to see more in the
light and maybe look for landmarks that they could see. The obvious suggestion I made was next time,
don’t mess around on the road with other drivers. You never know who and what kind of person
that other drivers are like. It can be
related to playing Russian roulette because they could be killers or not. After doing the exercise, it made me think
what a bunch of idiots the teenagers were.
In the next exercise it provided us
positive things to say/think when certain situations occur. For example, “I’m going to make that party on
time this time. Come on, come on, get
out of my way! Ah there’s traffic!…I can still make it if I step on it and cut
people off” instead of rushing and speeding, you can tell yourself “All right,
I’m not going to make it to the party on time again. Not cutting people off and speeding. I can chill for a few moments and listen to
my jams.” After doing this exercise, it
made me think of all the times I was in that same situation. I remembered that I acted and thought the say
way as the first column, reckless, impatient, self-fish and aggressive. This exercise gave me a new perspective on
these situations and now will try to act as if I am the only car on the
road.
In the third exercise we were asked
to evaluate ourselves as a driver. We
had to list our best driving traits, our worst driving traits, our best driving
traits according to our passenger, and our worst driving traits according to
our passenger. For my best driving
traits I put down that my skills as a driver and for my worst driving traits I
put down that I tend to speed excessively some time. When I asked my friend to
evaluate me he came up with basically the same thing, that I can drive good in
traffic because of my skills and my friend said that my worst driving trait was
that I don’t check all of my mirrors before I switch lanes. This gave me new
perspective to my driving; I had not even realized that when I don’t look at
all of my mirrors before I switch lanes was such as problem. It gave me new insight to my driving
psychology. I would have never known it
weren’t for this evaluation.
In the final exercise that we needed
to do for this question, it asked general driving questions and we either
respond yes or no to them. Questions
such as “I tailgate when someone drives too slow for conditions or in the
passing lane.” The amount of questions,
which you answered yes to, are counted up and scored accordingly. “If your score is less than five, you’re not
an aggressive driver and your road rage tendency is manageable. Scores between five and ten indicate that you
have moderate road rage habits. If your
score is greater than ten, your road rage tendency is out of control, enough to
compromise your ability to remain calm and fair in certain routine but
challenging driving situations.” I
scored a 4. I knew that I tended to be
an aggressive driver because I have done other test similar to this and it
showed that I was an aggressive driver.
I know that I may have a problem, and I witness it, but I still don’t
change. If someone does not want to
change or is not ready to, then change will not occur.
After doing the exercises in the
book, I got a better understanding of the concepts in the book. I could envision myself in those situations
or I recollected the times that I have been in some of them. All of these exercises gave me a chance to
look at myself from a different angle and perspective. It also brought new insight to my own
personal driving psychology. This is the first step to change, I believe,
knowing that you have a problem. Now the
question is what I am I going to do with this newfound knowledge? Obviously nothing because I still haven’t
changed.
Advice to Future
Generations
My advice to future students would be
to start on the reports early and do not wait until the end to do them. You need to set a schedule of when you want
to accomplish the reports. After
completing the first report, I was so relieved that it was over and we didn’t
have to complete work every week, however after that, when it was getting
closer to the due date for the second report, I wished that we had those weekly
due dates to keep us on track. Stay on
task and answer all questions thoroughly with clear answers. If you have questions or need help on some of
the questions, look at the previous generations on how they completed their
tasks. By having the previous
generations work available to anyone to use, is an excellent tool to use
because they have showed work that was satisfactory to the professor. The work that is uploaded on the web is
quality work approved by the professor. This class will also improve your
public speaking skills requiring you to do three oral presentations on the two
books of the class. My advice would be
to use these oral presentations to better yourself by becoming more comfortable
speaking in front of people and the class.
This class provides invaluable information on driving that may save your
lives by making you more aware of the aspects to driving that not everyone
looks at. Good luck!
Class Home Page
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy21/classhome-g21.htm
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af2004/Razon/