Report 3
My Proposal for Lifelong Driver Education
By Melissa Mansfield
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy20/g20lecturenotes409a.htm
1. Preface
In report #2 (www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2004/mansfield/report2.htm),
I analyzed myself as a driver and pinpointed key areas that needed
changing. Then I witnessed myself
thinking/doing these negative thoughts and behaviors. Next, I tried to change my negative driving
by using such tools as putting myself in the other persons
shoes or objectively evaluating the situation and coming to a different
conclusion than before. In report #2, I
explain in detail how I struggled to change these negative habits using suggestions
from Dr. James and Dr. Nahl's book Roadrage and Aggressive Driving. In report #2, I came to the conclusion that
my outlook on life was hindering me from seeing situations in an objective
light. While driving, I tend to think
the worst possible case is the most likely case and it was very hard to train
myself to reassess situations.
I need to learn to accept that sometimes people just make
mistakes or have a different style of driving then I am used to. Supportive driving is not just about driving
but about how people view the world. A
supportive driver is considerate, community-conscious and patient, which is how
I want to be in all area's of my life, not just
driving. The purpose of report #3 is to
propose my own new educational system for driving. This will hopefully help future drivers to
approach driving differently than current generations. The change in the education system needs to
start before the students even learn to drive.
The program is helpful not only for supportive driving but also for
helping students develop better emotional intelligence.
2. Introduction
In chapter 9 of Dr. James and Dr. Nahl’s
book Road Rage and Aggressive Driving, they begin by explaining how
teenagers are the most at risk for getting in a car accident. This is largely because of lack of experience
in hazardous situations and also teenagers do not assess risk very
accurately. Because they are more at
risk than any other age group, graduated licensing programs have been
implemented in some states. In response
to teenagers being at risk, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety created the
driver ZED program. The focus of the
program is not just on changing the driver’s actions, but actually changing
their beliefs and attitudes about driving.
In order to combat aggressive driving, the driver’s
affective self (or emotional self) must be recognized and modified. To change people’s driving habits, a whole
new philosophy of driving that focuses on pro-social and community-based
education must be implemented. The
driving psychology curriculum proposed by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl follows the driver throughout their lifetime. Kindergarten and elementary school training
would focus on affective driving skills.
Kids would learn about things like competitiveness, compassion, stress
and public space. In middle school, the
focus is on cognitive driving skills, such as habits, analysis of situations,
pedestrians/truckers/bicyclists rights, and benefits and rewards. High school driver education focuses on sensorimotor driving skills. This includes exercises such as coordination
training, alertness, communication and multitasking.
Adult drivers would participate in QDC’s
(quality driving circles), which would give drivers support in maintaining
their good driving practices. The RoadRageous video course, authored by Dr. Leon James, Dr.
Diane Nahl and Dr. Arnold Nerenberg,
is also helpful in teaching people techniques that help them improve their
driving habits permanently. It focuses
on teaching people how to self-monitor themselves and be aware of all that they
are thinking, feeling and doing while driving.
Another helpful tool is scenario analysis, which is looking at a road
rage incident and figuring out what caused the trouble and how could it have been
prevented, each step of the way.
The elderly face special challenges in their driving
education, such as dealing with changing physical abilities, fatigue, and
hostile behavior from other drivers.
They are more cautious and are slower than other drivers and they might
have attention lapses or difficulty concentrating when someone is talking. Many people would like to mandate special
tests for elderly drivers but groups such as AARP (The American Association of
Retired Persons) say that is age discrimination. However, there are refresher courses offered
for seniors. Unfortunately, there is no
test that correctly determines who is a safe driver and who is not.
A good way to reduce stress and increase enjoyment while
driving is to be supportive of the people driving on the road and be
compassionate about their mistakes.
Also, trying to maintain a positive attitude and not relinquish control
over the situation by letting other drivers upset you.
A quote from the book that caused me to pause and think was
from the Novice Driver Education Model Curriculum Outline which stated “Strong
motivation makes up for weak skills better than strong skills make up for weak
motivation.” (194 Road Rage and Aggressive Driving by Dr. Leon James and
Dr. Diane Nahl)
I find this true because I believe you can talk all day about being a
better driver but once you get out on the road, it is a whole different
story. Having the desire to change is
much more important than knowing how to change.
You can give people all the tools in the world to improve their driving
habits but if they are not motivated to implement them, what is the point?
Another surprising quote was from the 16 year old boy that
wrote to Dr. Driving. He stated “We know
that we were stupid and added to the problem but we think that he’s an adult
and he was the one who was making it into a battle.” (205 Road Rage and
Aggressive Driving by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl) The funny part is the kid stated earlier in
the letter that him and his friend both slowed down, blocking the only two
lanes. Why does he not consider this
battling the other driver? It clearly
illustrates how it is so easy to be subjective on the road and not see things
from the other person’s perspective. I
am not saying the kid was completely responsible for what happened but it’s
clear that the incident could have been prevented if the boy had used a little
more caution and common sense.
Finally, I was surprised to read (in the section on problems
elderly drivers encounter) that “One time one of the ladies yelled at me in the
parking lot, ‘You’ve got all day but I haven’t.’ I guess what she thinks is
we’re just a bunch of old fogies.” This
seemed really rude to me because even if I were impatient and wanted someone to
hurry up, I would just keep quiet and take it.
I would never confront an elderly person and say such impolite things to
someone older than me. This reflects the
level of disrespect in our driving culture and the fast paced mentality of the
public.
3. Class Discussions
and Lecture Notes
In Eleanor Samuel’s oral presentation on
I thought this was an excellent point because sometimes I
feel better about myself thinking, well, at least I don’t let my anger get out
of control and start cursing and causing a scene. But repressing the anger is no better than
expressing it because both cause stress, which is bad for the body. The only true way to rise above it is to not
let drivers behaving badly get to you in the first place and talk to yourself
about how everyone makes mistakes and so on.
This is what Eleanor calls stabilizing your emotions.
Another excellent point of this presentation was that in
driving education, role-playing is a good way to learn to deal with aggressive
driving situations. This allows the
person to develop an actual plan that they are comfortable using if that
situation ever occurs in real life. This
is more effective than just telling someone what to do in that situation
because with role playing, the person is put on the spot and has to actually
try to diffuse the situation as if it were really happening. In the section on shrinking emotional
territory, Eleanor talks about how culturally, we are defensive about the way
we drive because it is easier to keep our old habits and not admit we need to
change. Change is hard so people are
reluctant to admit there is a problem in the first place.
I disagree with her idea on the topic of emotional
intelligence, specifically the cultural aspect.
She says that people who learned how to drive from careful and positive
people will turn out to be good drivers, while people who did not learn from
these careful and positive drivers will turn out to be oppositional or
defensive drivers. I think there are
many things that influence how a person drives, like the society they grew up
in, the family they grew up in, the values they were taught, the role models
they follow and their way of viewing the world.
There are many, many things that influence the way we drive, so to say
that whoever taught you to drive has that much influence on how you drive now
is not accurate.
I also disagree with her statement “People, in general, need
to be aggressive in order to get what they want, but being aggressive while
driving can sometimes get you what you don’t want.” This was under the topic of emotional
intelligence, the psychological aspect.
I think in general people are not aggressive. I think some people are really aggressive and
others are extremely passive, but the majority are neutral and only become
aggressive when the pushed to that edge.
Things build and build psychologically until people snap but that doesn’t
mean in general people act aggressively to get what they want.
In Glenn Wada’s oral presentation on
I thought that he made a good point in the section on
training for supportive driving under the cultural aspect. Being prepared to deal with challenging
moments by practicing supportive driving can help all of us be supportive
drivers. For instance, we can practice
being supportive walkers or supportive classmates. If someone bumps you in the hall, you could
tell yourself that person must be late for something so that is why they bumped
me; they did not do it on purpose to disrespect me. Practicing having a supportive outlook in all
areas of life could definitely help in being a supportive driver.
Another good point about training to be a supportive driver
was the example of how psychologically, we assume that people are intentionally
trying to annoy us when really it is beside the point why they are doing
it. We all make mistakes; even if they
are doing something wrong, we have all done something wrong at one time or
another. In the quote from the book, the
person says they put a picture of themselves in their rear-view mirror to
remind themselves that when they look at other people, they are really looking
at themselves. This is a good point considering
we are all human and all make mistakes.
I did not really understand one part of the topic road rage
against passengers. Under the cultural
heading, he says that it is easy for some drivers to ignore their passengers complaints because it is a cultural norm that we
grow up with. I can see how maybe it is
a cultural norm for the driver to be in charge of the vehicle and not the
passengers, but I think people do care about their passengers. They simply fail to realize that what they
are doing is hurtful to their passengers.
In Hiroko Kikuchi’s oral presentation on
When Hiroko talks about driver education for the elderly, I
did not understand why in one sentence that testing elderly people simply
because of their age is age discrimination, yet in the next sentence it states
that a person over 60 should “retake both written and driving tests to evaluate
their driving abilities. In addition to
that, they also need to take physical examination.” This is contradictory and I think testing the
elderly won’t happen because there is no definite test to prove that they cause
more accidents than any other age group, so they cannot be singled out.
At the end of the presentation, Hiroka
says that by using the QDC’s, the driving psychology
curriculum, and the RoadRageous video course, you
create a lifelong approach to driver’s education. I think that there needs to be a style of
training and teaching for each different level of driving education. The training must begin before the child even
learns to drive and it should be tailored to fit the need of even the oldest
driver so that everyone matures as a driver as they get older.
One idea in Dr. James and Diane Nahl’s
book that I found really interesting was the approach to adult driver training,
namely the Quality Driving Circles or QDCs. This is basically a support group (“Either
face-to-face or virtual” 200) that monitors driving behavior and supports
on-going training regarding their driving.
I see it as a very good tool to help the general public view driving as
a social action that affects everyone.
It will help people talk about issues and go over why certain thoughts and
behaviors are negative. Just discussing
driving issues makes you think more about yourself as a driver so a QDC could
also be communication between driver and passenger. As long as the driver is constantly trying to
better him/herself, then their involvement in some sort of support group will
help them to succeed in their goals.
Another tool for drivers is the RoadRageous
video course. It is a program that
focuses on acknowledging that sometimes we are not the best drivers, witnessing
ourselves making bad choices and finally modifying our behavior into something
better. There is also a focus on
teaching critical thinking skills by using TEE’s or
Traffic Emotions Education card. This
involves a step-by-step analysis of a real road rage incident. This helps people to understand what can
happen when drivers go with the surge of emotion and how things can get out of
control. Hopefully, this will lead to a
greater awareness of emotions and thoughts.
The driver ZED CD-ROM, created by the AAA Foundation for
Traffic Safety, is a program specially designed for training teen drivers in
appropriate risk management. The road
rage problem is partly because of faulty beliefs and inaccurate assessment of
situations. Therefore in order to help
solve the road rage and aggressive driving problem, certain common beliefs
about driving must be reevaluated and new, more supportive beliefs must be
taught. For example, most road rage
aggressors believe that dangerous, rude, and different drivers need to
ridiculed, punished or somehow made to see they are wrong. Vigilante behavior does not help these
situations; it only makes them more dangerous.
The ZED program claims they have “been evaluated under real driving conditions
and has been shown to produce statistically significant improvements...” (193 Road
Rage and Aggressive Driving)
4. My Proposal for
Lifelong Driver Education
I agree with Dr. James and Dr. Nahl’s
lifelong driver education curriculum because education should start from the
time a person is exposed to driving till they finally stop driving, from
infancy to old age. At each stage the
approach to teaching should be different because obviously young children will not
fully grasp the sensorimotor aspects of driving
yet. However they can understand how mom
and dad act in the car and they do see drivers on television so they already
have many models around them. This is
why education should start early. I
think school systems could benefit greatly from including driving curriculum in
class, maybe while also teaching emotional intelligence. This focus on the students
emotional and cognitive self is not dealt with until maybe the first year of
college when most universities require freshmen to take an ‘adjusting to
college life’ class.
Why wait this long to highlight the importance of having
good judgment and rational thinking skills?
In elementary and preschool (4 yrs old to 10 yrs old), the focus should
be on teachings awareness of emotions and sharing those emotions with other
people. The curriculum should have
exercises such as doing one thing a day that makes someone else feel good. This type of exercise would demonstrate that
our words and actions have a profound affect on the people around us. There should also be emphasis on recognizing
negative emotions such as competitiveness, anger and disappointment. Once the child is tuned in with their own
feelings, they can better understand what is happening, as far as their
emotions and how to deal with these feelings.
The curriculum could get parents involved by asking them to really pay
attention to what types of shows their children are watching.
Parents could just sit with their child while they are
watching television, in order to ask them questions
about the show and maybe compare it to real life. This would give the child a better
perspective on what is ok on TV and what is ok in real life. Recognizing early that fact and fiction have
very different consequences will help the child see that when drivers behave
badly on TV, they do not reap the same consequences as people in real life
driving badly.
As the child gets older and goes to junior high school
(around 11 yrs old to 13 yrs old), their interests change. There should be an emphasis on their rights
and the rights of others. This is the
age when kids start looking around at their peers and questioning who they are,
so it would be a good time to stress the importance of making decisions based
on other’s rights and their own rights.
For example, the question might be put forth ‘Is it alright to cross the
street in a crosswalk without a traffic light, even when there is heavy
traffic?’ This hopefully will make them
deduct that even though, as pedestrians, they have the right of way, they must
make the safe and supportive decision to cross only when it is safe.
This will help them develop their cognitive skills for when
they begin to drive and they must make critical decisions where the answer is
not always clear. For example, if someone
waves you through an intersection, should you just go? No, even thought they are giving you the
right of way, you still have to establish when it is safe for you to go. This type of curriculum will get the students
ready to be supportive drivers. When
they do get behind the wheel (around 14 yrs old to 18 yrs old), the school
should be realistic about how teenagers drive, such as teaching them to train
themselves to keep their eyes on the road and let their fingers find the dials
on the radio.
A good practice is to change your CD at a stoplight so you
don’t distract yourself while driving.
Student drivers are at risk statistically because they are inexperienced
so I think graduated licensing is a good idea.
First, they must obtain a permit that allows them to drive with a
licensed driver. Then if they are
accident-free for 6 months, they can get their real license but they are
restricted to driving with no more than 2 people in the car. If they manage to be accident-free for
another 6 months, then they have a year of driving under their belt with no
accidents and they should be allowed to have the freedom of a regular
license. The first year a student gets
their license is the most dangerous, so I feel that a graduated licensing
program could help them in their transition from a beginner to a skilled
driver.
Another good tool is to have guest speakers (such as people
affected by a car accident or a victim of road rage) come talk to the schools
so that kids can see the consequences of bad driving. They could break down a road rage incident
into its stages. This will help them
reason that when you make a bad decision, bad things happen. Speakers from the community would be best
because then there can be a real connection between the speaker and the
students.
I liked Chad Garhartt's suggestion
(in his second oral presentation) to teach anger management in school and I
think high school would be a great time to teach kids breathing excercises or the benefits of exercise in relieving tension
and stress. This is a highly emotional
time for kids and they could really benefit from some physical, sensorimotor calming techniques to help them deal with
anger and stress.
The
adult education should consist of every driver participating in a QDC or
People
that have chronic problems driving aggressively should have to take a mandatory
anti-aggressive driving course that stresses the importance of respecting
authority and acknowledging the importance of the community and it’s safety. Once the
delinquent driver has passed the program they also should participate in a
special QDC, especially for people with anti-social traits or criminal
tendencies. There should always be an
emphasis on rewards, rewards, rewards, because this is what motivates people,
in my opinion. Even if it is not a
material reward, but recognition from the community and other group member, it
would still be effective.
To
implement this proposal, funding must be provided from the government for the
schools to put into practice these suggestions.
Parents would have to be held accountable for what their children are
watching on television and the examples they are setting. Law enforcement would have the option of
giving a special ticket for aggressive driving, which would be based on
objective and measurable criteria.
I
also believe that car manufacturers should make a
anti-tailgating beeping sound standard in every car. That way if an irate driver gets to close to
someone's car, an irritating buzzing sound would not turn off until the driver
backed off. Tailgating is a chronic
problem and I would guess that it contributes greatly to the incidents of
crashes. Some people may feel that this
is punishing people unnecessarily but it is not unnessasary
because it will save people lives. The
more space you have between cars, the more reaction time the driver has.
In
order to implement this, car manufacturers would have to find an economical way
to put this system in every car and the government would have to pass a law
making it mandatory for all makes and models of cars to have this feature. This way, the tailgaters could not just buy a
car that did not have the feature.
5. Conclusion
Social
attitudes maintain that there is nothing we can do about the problem except
shrug our shoulders and proclaim that the world is going to hell in a hand
basket. People do not want to recognize
that they are part of the problem, but also part of the solution. Culturally, we are intolerant of people who
drive differently from us. Because I
know this and can see it every time I get on the road, it helps me to be more
forgiving of peoples mistakes and try to put myself in their shoes. Socially, I
try to tell people that complaining about the trafffic
problem is not going to fix it. Lobbying
to your congressman/woman to get mass-transit in
6. Future Generations
Reading
Dr. James's articles, such as the one entitled Quality Driving Circles (www.drdriving.com) helped me to write my
report and focus on what I thought was really important for future driving
curriculum. A lot of people had really
good suggestions in their oral presentations so it is good to pay attention to
their proposals for changed in the education system. This can give you ideas on the type of
changes that could be made to facilitate supportive driving.