Driving
Psychology: Theory and Application
By
Hiroko Kikuchi
Instructions for Report 1
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy20/g20lecturenotes409a.htm
1.Preface
In this PSY409a course, we focus on the
driving behaviors affected by psychological aspects. This class was designed to
inform, understand, and identify students about the dangerous behaviors from
psychological points of view. By understand our own bad driving habits, we are
able to learn many methods and strategies to fix those behaviors to become
better drivers.
I am in the 20th generation, and
I am very happy to become part of the class with such a long history. I am also
lucky to have a lot of information to access and obtain from the previous
generations. Here are three home pages,
which I found very interesting:
I found a lot of same opinion about computer
in Kathi Fujii’s home page (http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/409as97/kathif/report1.htm).
She talked about how amazing to jump people’s mind and thoughts by clicking on
the hyperlinks on the web these days. I totally agree Kathi, and I am also
amazed by the amount of the information we can get on the web by just typing
key words and clicking on the hyperlinks. Not only we can get useful
information, but we can also get helps from many professionals in many
different field. I agree to Kathi that everybody should consider using a
computer as part of our live because it is very convenient!
I also found interesting information in
Steve Cstro Jr‘s home page (http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2001/castro/report1.htm),
which he talked about different types of rage. People can express their rage
everywhere, and it was very interesting to read different kinds of rage,
especially the surf rage since I don’t surf.
Stephen Weers’s homepage (http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af98/weers/report2weers.html)
contained a very cute dog picture, and I found many common points of view with
Stephen about the speed limit. I also believe that the different “safe” speed
limits are posted around certain places according to the valid safety reasons
by research and tests. I sometimes feel that some speed limits are too slow,
but I try to keep my speed within 10mph of the speed limits for the safety
reasons.
There are much more wonderful information we
can get from previous generations, and I hope that I can also contribute useful
information to the classmates, readers as well as the future generations.
2. Introduction
“Driving Psychology” is the topic of this
class, and the purpose of this class is to study and understand the
psychological influences on the drivers. As we study driver’s behaviors from
many perspectives, such as cultural and psychological, we can learn that understanding
of own cognitive process while driving automobile is one of the most important
things to acquired good driving habits. By taking this course, I can expect to
identify my own bad driving habits, and I hope to modify those behaviors to
become more safer and smart driver on the road.
3. Definitions
i. The driver's threefold Self
The
drivers threefold self has three domains of driving behaviors, which are
affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. The “affective” refers to our emotions
and motivations while we drive a car. The “cognitive” refers to our thinking
and reasoning process while we drive a car, and the “sensorimotor” refers to
our actions, sensations, and perceptions while we drive a car. These three
aspects interact one another to determine our driving styles.
Reference:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy20/g20lecturenotes409a.htm
ii. Self-witnessing methodology
A strategy used to identify
our routine driving behaviors both physically and mentally. By criticize and
find out our negative driving behaviors, we can modify those specific bad
behaviors to become more calm and smart drivers. There are couple ways to
identify our driving behaviors. One of the ways is to place a tape recorder in
the car, and the drivers could play the tape later on to hear if any rages
(negative emotions) were expressed while driving.
Reference: http://www.drdriving.org/articles/taxonomy.htm
iii. Road rage
Road rage is angry and
negative emotions that are expressed by using offensive gestures, offensive
words, and offensive driving techniques while driving a car. An example of road rage would be, a driver
cut me right front of me without using blinkers. Therefore, I got mad, and
decided to speed up and pass the car. While I am passing the car, I yelled
offensive words and gave driver a finger.
iv. Aggressive driving legislation
Aggressive
driving legislation is a law enforcement effort to fight against dangerous and
aggressive drivers by legislators at federal, states, and city. There are many
attempts to combine law enforcement with public awareness by encouraging public
civilians to identify and repot of aggressive drives to police stations in
order to stop them. In 1997, when I was still living in the Marshall Islands,
police department performed a campaign to stop aggressive drivers by
embarrassing the drivers. The civilians reported the aggressive driver’s
license numbers to police, and the police department would list those numbers
in the local newspaper every week with driver’s name. I believe that this
method worked pretty well because of the small population in the Marshall
Islands. I think the law enforcement letting drivers’s take their own
responsibility to stop aggressive driving is very important.
References:
http://www.aggressive.drivers.com/papers/james-nahl/james-nahl-paper.html
James,
Leon & Nahl, Diane. (2000a). Road
Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare, Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books.
v. The driver's
emotional intelligence
Refers
to the ability an individual has to maintain stable and calm while driving a
car, so aggressive emotions are not expressed. By keeping the high emotional
intelligence, the drivers are able to hold their negative emotions to come out.
This way, the drivers are able to reduce level of stress, and also able to
concentrate on the safety. In contrast, the drivers with low emotional
intelligence are likely to out burst the negative and offensive emotions while
driving.
References:
James,
Leon & Nahl, Diane. (2000a). Road
Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare, Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books.
vi. The driver's
emotional spin cycle
The
drivers emotional spin cycle is our daily emotional cycles that were learned
during childhood by socialization. There are four options in the cycles, which
are positive about the world/others, negative about world/others, positive
about self, or negative about self. As we can see in the diagram below,
driver's emotional spin cycle contain three components from the driver's threefold
Self, which are affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. All of those components
are interact one other to cross bridge to express certain emotion in the
certain circumstances.
References:
http://www.drdriving.org/surveys/rage_depression.htm
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy16/g16reports-instructions.html
vii.
Newsgroups for drivers
A
community on the web, where people who are interested in the automobile are
able to discuss a lot of topics, share experiences and get advices about
driving. The most common and easiest way to communicate other is by using
bulletin board. For example, if I want to discuss about road rage with other, I
can simply post a topic on the bulletin board and wait for other to reply. We
can also get professional advice from website such as “Dr.Driving” (http://www.drdriving.org/index.htm),
which is operated by Dr.James and Dr.Nahl.
viii. Lifelong driver
education
An
idea to help maintain good driving habits for a life-long by receiving driver
education. The individual drivers doesn’t necessary need to take driver’s
education through the classroom, but rather, the drivers should voluntarily
receive the driving education to prevent from being aggressive drivers on the
road.
Reference:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/traffic/otsc.html
- flow
ix.
Defensive driving
Defensive
driving is a philosophy to help drivers to reduce aggressive thoughts, and let
drivers concentrate on the safety of themselves, vehicles, and passengers. I
think that a lot of people develop defensive driving when they ride a car with
newborn babies or young children.
References:
James, Leon & Nahl,
Diane. (2000a). Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
x. Rushing maniac
Drivers who want to reach
their destination by a certain amount of time or as fast as they can, and this
is a most common driving obsession.
Reference:
James, Leon & Nahl,
Diane. (2000a). Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
4. Autobiography
I grew up in Tokyo, Japan,
where public transportations systems are very organized. Therefore, even though
my father drove to work everyday, I always used public transportations, and I
only rode in a car with my father few times a years when we went to the family
trip. My father’s driving style is always calm, and even though I could see the
very slow traffic would irritate him, I never saw him yelling or giving any
aggressive gestures to other or to the family members in the car while driving
a car. My mother got her license when we moved to the Marshall Islands 10 years
ago, and I started to ride in a car with my mother then. I have seen my mother
being irritated by the aggressive, rude drivers, but I also have never seen my
mother yelling or giving any offensive gestures to other drivers. Therefore, I
guess I can say that my parent’s driving styles are very calm and smart.
My father started to teach
me how to drive when I turned 16 years old, and I got my license few months
after. I started to drive my car almost everyday after school, but I felt like
I was on the go-kart track because there is only one main road in the Marshall
Islands without any stop sings. Therefore, a lot of people assume that there
should be many non-aggressive drivers in the Marshall Islands, but
unfortunately, it is wrong. Even though there is only one road without any stop
signs, the minor accidents occur almost everyday, and big accident occurs once
in a while. Therefore, road rage also occurs. As I stated earlier that my
parents drive very calm, but I get very angry when someone cut me rudely. When
I get angry, I beep the horn and I find myself using very offensive words.
I love watching TV and
playing games, but I am not sure if I have any media influences because I am to
scare to watch violence scene, and I am not interested in games which involved
driving fast. I can definitely say that a lot of my friends have hot tempers
when they are driving, but I have been driving before I met them, so my driving
tempers must be from my own personality. However, I am not sure why I get very
angry when I am driving because my personality is very easy going and shy.
Therefore, I hope to modify my driving styles through out this semester.
5. Conclusion
I haven’t really though about my bad
driving habits and tempers until I started to taking this course, and this
assignment made me identify my bad habits and tempers as a driver. I realized
that I do get angry easily while I am driving even though my personality is
very easy going and shy. I might discover more bad driving habits through out
this course. However, I think that identifying my tempers and bad habits as a
driver is very useful, and I wish to fix my bad habits and improve my driving
skills in the future.
6. Future Generations
As
I mentioned in the earlier, by taking the driving psychology course, we can
definitely study and understand our driving behaviors from many perspective,
especially psychological aspect. By identifying individual’s driving behaviors,
we can fix those bad behaviors, and I wish to modify my bad behaviors to become
smart person on the road, and I believe that this course can definitely make us
defensive driver!
Class home page
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy20/g20classhome.html
My home
page
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2004/kikuchi/