Children's Self-Witnessing Reports as Road Users

What Is Self-Witnessing?

I was fortunate enough to have my nephew Naoki, 8 years old, visiting me from Japan (although this is not the main purpose of his visiting) in November (I think he got to skip some classes thanks to the visit--his father, my cousin, could not take vacation during the summer and this was the only time he could leave his job for more than several days.) I was the tour guide for his family, so it was a perfect opportunity. I was able to train Naoki in several different occasions.

Self-Witnessing as a Passenger

On the first day, Naoki was just too excited about the differences in everything between the US and Japan. He had never experienced being in a car that is driving on the right side of the road. I think he was a bit scared about that as well especially when he saw cars coming from the other direction. So I just let him observe whatever he could so he would get used to US traffic.

After a couple of days, Naoki was feeling comfortable in my car, so I started teaching him the basic regulations of the road, such as distance between cars while cars are in motion, and who has the right of way when one side has the red light but intending to turn left. Naoki told me that he had had traffic education in his school which taught him how to walk or ride on his bicycle safely down the busy street in Osaka (The driving environment in big cities in Japan is beyond anyone's imagination nowadays! They are really fast and "wild!"), and that the teachers said that the pedestrians should be respected the most on the road, then bicycles and scooters, and cars should be the last ones to be "bossy" on the road.

Observing in the front passenger's seat, Naoki noticed the "friendly" facial expressions or hand gestures of other drivers and thought it was "cool" because he has never got to do it himself. I told Naoki that there had been incidents where "mean" facial expressions or hand gestures lead people to fights and some got killed. Naoki said that growing up in the rough part of the city, it is totally understandable (!), and that I had to be very careful because I would never know what kind of gestures could trigger someone's aggression (this came out of the mouth of a 8-year-old kid!).

We spent a lot of time driving, and there are many times when the car in front of us was very slow. I asked him what he would do, and he answered that he would either pass the car if there are two lanes, or just drive behind the car patiently because he was not in a hurry. I said, expecting some agreement, that I would just place my car close behind and let them know that they were slow (I meant tailgating). Naoki said that if I did it, the car in front of us would probably stop and cause us trouble. He said, "Why don't you just do the 'passing' and get over it?" "Passing" is the term that Japanese drivers use for the act of the faster car honk at the slower car in front and ask him/her to drive off the lane and wait on the side until the faster car passes by. In Japan, it is performed in a uniform manner and it is not considered rude. I told him that in the US I tried to be very careful not to honk at other cars too much because there are no such rules like "passing." He thought it was strange not to have the rule.

Self-Witnessing as a Pedestrian

Other than driving, we did a lot of walking because the family went shopping like other Japanese tourists (!). So I asked Naoki what he thought about busy shopping malls packed with people who were walking everywhere and not so alert, sometimes kicking small children by accident or bumping into each other, and how he would compare it to his regular walking on the street back home. Naoki said that he would always try to be alert and watch out for unexpected runners or other cars and obstacles. When there were too many people and he needed to pass those people, he would say "Sumimasen(Excuse Me)" and ask to give him some space to go ahead.

I thought that his answers were too perfect, or "Yuutousei," so I asked Naoki if he had ever felt frustrated about traffic or walking in the packed crowd in Osaka. Naoki said that his mother, his former kindergarten teachers, and his elementary school teachers always told him that he had to be careful and he had to protect himself from the dangerous traffic environment because nobody else would do it for him. He has also watched a lot of videos in school about car accidents and traffic rules, so he was "somewhat too scared not to worry about safety." Naoki said that whenever he was having fun with his friend and running on the street, he would think about himself hit by a car turning the corner and suddenly he would stop, or at least slow down. He told me that of course he would get frustrated by too many people in the train station when he was in a hurry, or in the shopping malls because he was too small to be seen in the crowd that would accidentally kick him while walking. However, it would be silly to stop and yell at each one of them.

After Thoughts

It was interesting that Naoki demonstrated such complete knowledge about traffic rules and care for other road users at that young age. However, come to think of it, I was just like him when I was 8 years old, especially thanks to the thoroughness and consistency of the traffic education in Japan. Probably when I got older I saw a lot of older people being very aggressive or erratic and thought it was "cool." Because it is considered common that at a certain age we always want to be some kind of rebel and cause trouble. It is unfortunate that that is usually the time when a kid obtains his/her driver's license.

When I just got my driver's license, I had no idea how I would drive my car, however, since then I have become more conscious about how other people were driving. I started copying other people's style consciously or unconsciously because I did not know what to do when I was frustrated by other drivers, or things did not go my way when I was driving. I felt that I had no choice; I had nobody to tell me that I could be patient and be calm and think about other drivers' situations, too.

I think that teaching Self-Witnessing at an early age will be very helpful for them because by the time they get their own driver's licenses, they will be probably doing it unconsciously. At the same time, it will be important for educators to put effort in continuing the program all the way until they become adults, making corrections and adjustments as they grow up. Children are good in learning new things, and it gets difficult when they get older, so it is perfect that they learn good skills early on and keep it throughout their driving career.

This experiment was very interesting, but because it involves a child, I had a difficult time finding a child the parents of whom would allow me to do it because they thought it could be dangerous. I was lucky that my nephew came in good timing. However, I wish I could do it with local or American kids because in Japan, traffic education is very thorough and also kids have already learned to be nice to others and do not tell their seniors what they are really feeling. If I have another chance, I will definetely try American kids to see how different they are from Japanese kids that I know. And it is important to asses your kid on how much knowledge they have on the traffic rules. Otherwise, they see things (tailgating, speeding, accelerating on the yellow lights, etc.) and think that those are the ways they are supposed to be. I had a really fun time doing this, so I encourage everyone to try this out!

This exercise was very interesting because I discovered that I was really "Americanized" in driving. In Japan, rules are very tightly set and since the driving education curriculum is the same across the country, the majority of drivers has a very uniform perception and knowledge about driving and traffic regulations. Therefore, Japanese drivers have some kind of understanding about other people's driving behaviors. I think one of the reasons why road rage occurs is that in the US we have so many different "driving characters" or "driving styles" and they do not communicate very well. Through the years, I have become a more "free spirit" driver and started forgetting the training that I had in Japan. The difference that my nephew and I had in thought on traffic regulations and drivers' behaviors was almost directly coming from that cultural difference and age (getting exposed to negative examples). I hope that he retains that good quality as he grows up.

The Self-Witnessing Method is very useful in finding out about what is missing in my driving philosophy in order to be a good traffic psychologist. I do not say by any means that I am a perfect driver now just because I did this exercise once. I need to remind myself to keep on doing this exercise to improve my driving.